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Is Male Friendship in Crisis? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Dave Miller, and this is Jim Jalamis in NYC.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: NYC.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is welcome to Boomer Has It.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jim's gonna Jim's gonna introduce this episode because this is a subject we've both been talking about for a while, and he's compiled pages of notes.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's been very industrious on this.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Jim, tell us uh tell the audience what we're gonna be discussing today.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about a real or maybe an imaginary problem, and it's that male friendships may be hard to make and sustain.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: So audience members who are men, cisgender, heterosexual, do you have a robust robust contact list of similar friends?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're operating at a loss, you might not be alone.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sociologists confirm that men are facing a historic loneliness epidemic, so they say.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's sometimes called the male friendship deficit, and we'll offer a few other coinages.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: It seems timely that we might apologize to the late late night show with David Letterman, and now what is now the former late night show with Colbert, Stephen Colbert, the late famous Stephen Colbert.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: We already miss him.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: We miss him.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: So here's our top 10 list, our top 10 coinages for the male friendship deficit.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's call it number one, the dude desert, maybe number two, the bro barrier.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: How about number three?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Guy gridlock, number four.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: This will get social sociologists excited.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: The Chad ceiling.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: And in England, for you, let's call it stalemate.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: The dude diaspora, the lad lockout, the homie hurdle.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: This one's hard.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: The bracopolix brapocalypse.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Couple more.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Lack of mandate.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: No country for old friends.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Of mice and lonely men.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, for anyone, any females listening or any gay men listening, number 10, the he kiki crisis.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're gonna have it with me.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: He kiki crisis.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, that's a great list, Jim.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Explain what what this is, this male friendship deficit, which has been um designated what by psychologists as a as a national, what is it, a medical emergency?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: How is it being how is it being described?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's um the data is this.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um a recent Gallup poll said that 25% of young men in this country ages 18 to 34 are lonely compared to 18 of women.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So one in five men are lonely.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um but that coincides with a loneliness epidemic cited by the Surgeon General a couple of years ago.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, it was so dire that this Surgeon General, who had been working under Obama and reappointed under Biden, he he declared his name was uh Vivek Murphy, Murphy.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's not Irish, it's Murphy.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um issued a landmark advisory declaring loneliness and social isolation, a public health epidemic.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Ready for this, guys.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: It warns that lacking social connections as detrimental to physical health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So get your Rolodex out, everyone.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Cut down on your tar and nicotine.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask a question here?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is that because it shortens men's lifespan?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do they figure on this on this comparison to smoking?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's not men, it's it's a general loneliness epidemic in the United States.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: The some recent data suggests it's men, it's more men are more affected by it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just um can I just uh resist or criticize uh from a boomer point of view?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: That earlier statistic was between 18 and 34 year olds, which doesn't speak at all to the people, you know, uh uh our age.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: As you get older, it's more difficult to to both maintain friendships and even more difficult to develop new friendships.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that that age range for that figure doesn't speak to me at all.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was that age, when we were that age in our 20s and 30s, certainly living in New York, it was so easy to meet people when you're in your 20s when you're not married, um, or you don't have a live-in partner.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just very you're out every night and you're meeting tons of people.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So so for me, that statistic is is is not all that useful.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I didn't mean to criticize your research, which was great, but I I'd be interested in in finding a statisti as a statistic for people, I you know, for boomers, for people our age, and and um, and I think you'd find it a much higher um you know, much more of a problem as you know you know what's inspiring this this podcast is our friendship.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: But here you are criticizing my research, and I demand you apologize to me.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sick of apologizing it with my mic.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize you all the time.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You never apologize.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our our friendship, our friendship in my in my life, it's the exception to the rule.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think it's just all the more remarkable our friendship because we've we've known each other for 30 years, over 30 years, I think, um, since the mid-90s.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I always appreciated how and I I think I've told you this before.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciated the fact that when you um got together with Carol and you married, got married, you didn't drop me as a single friend.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I had friends, single friends who when they got married dropped me as a friend because they would hanging out with married couples, you know.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I and so you know, our friend friendship's been consistent all that time.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I moved to London 20 years ago when I got married, and we both had kids.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, and and um, and our friendship has maintained, has been maintained throughout that entire period, made easier in the last decade or so because with the advent of FaceTime, and you know, it's just so much easier to communicate than it would have been.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I forget how we communicated when I first moved to London.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you had to visit me to speak to me.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You came over to see my play when it was done at the German Street Theatre, which was great, which was in like 2008 or something, and then you visited me again last summer, um, and I visited you in um in New York.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I can't remember how we communicated anyway.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this that's just a that's a roundabout way of saying technically it should be easier to maintain friends long distance friendships now than it used to be.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just and and that's to hold on to friendships you already have.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Developing new friendships is really tough.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And since I moved to London 20 years ago, I think I've met two guys, one of whom was American and moved back to America.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Reed Burney, terrific actor that a friend introduced me to, and the other um is um is about to move to Spain.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: My friend Pete Silver.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna lose him as a friend.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least seeing him.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hope to maintain both friendships.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd be can stay in communication with him.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what, why is this so difficult for men?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Women have do have a little more of a traditional structure for for developing friends.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, let me say, I think you're facing a lad lockout for sure, and you gotta get to work on that.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: But as for women, um the the thinking is that they've already, you know, uh it's young men in crisis, there's a lot, there's a lot about it right now, it's not new.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but the thinking is that women have been um dominated, they've been shamed, they've been ridiculed by men for a hundred years.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're they can adapt better to any kind of adversity.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh gay men, they have built a social infrastructure for themselves when no one else would, especially during the gay men's health crisis, the AIDS crisis in the 80s.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so you know, the thinking is that young straight men are facing joblessness, destitution, lack of opportunity, and we can talk about whose fault that is.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people blame boomers.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh the fact is that um I lost my train of thought.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Please, I want to put guess uh just interject that that that a lot of women would argue with this, and I think uh I mean I'm contradicting something I just said a few minutes ago, but I mean my wife complains that she doesn't have any friends, and I think a lot of women would feel certainly our age, um, feel the same way.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I say our age because we're we're not, you know, when you have a family, you are um stuck at home or and um you're reduced maybe to um you know the the the parents of your children's friends, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And people always say, what well, you know, you should have no lots of people.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're you know, you've got uh two children in school and the you know you're hanging out with uh other parents.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like I haven't hasn't been my experience at all.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've got sort of nothing in common with these people, um, unfortunately, and and um it's hard to or or in England it's a more reticent culture anyway.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But sorry, getting back to what I was just trying to make a point, but I think women would argue that there's a there's a crisis of friendship for them as well.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we're two guys, and we are talking about male friendship, which um just hasn't been discussed much until recently, and then it suddenly seems to be discussed a lot.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: There was an article we both read in the New York Times about a week ago.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember that guy's name.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was um it went on forever.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh it was it was a pretty long article.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was it went on and on, and it was Where have all it was called Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: It they the Times released it a few days ago, even though they have a May 25 date line.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still reading it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't gotten to the end of it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on chapter nine.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It just goes on, it gets away from the core argument.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I think core argument was what really struck a lot of people because it it got a lot of comments, hundreds of comments, uh maybe thousands of comments.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so he obviously struck a nerve.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody commented that the half the article was uh seemed to be about uh he became a marathon runner and was complaining about other things, but um, but obviously uh a lot of people identified with the core argument, or at least the headline, whether they've read the article or not.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, again, I'm just I'm not fully convinced that it's a it's a male crisis.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, you know, that young men are in crisis.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think it we go back to the idea that there's a loneliness epidemic, um, and that it it crosses gender lines.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um, but we could, you know, you couldn't say you can break it down demographically to say, you know, what have maybe analyze and say what have young men lost that men of our generation had?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Or how does how do you define a male friendship?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is it based on watching NFL?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is it based on activity?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how was it in the old days?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: In the old days, you know, I think three of every five people were in a union.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Two of them.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I wanted to ask you.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, did your dad have have friends, have any friends?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: My dad had one friend, I think, that wasn't in the family member.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he had many other friends.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Did your dad have friends?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Most of my father's friends were um sort of uh related to the Greek American diaspora.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: They were they were Greek men who had come of age with him, they had family or strong friend relationships from another generation.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: My my godfather was one of his best friends, for example.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: How did he meet the these are these people he worked with?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or how did he was there like uh a Greek American?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was mostly through family and friends, and then he had some he had some professional friends later in life, a lot of them, um, through the medical community.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um was a World War II uh veteran, but unlike a lot of other veterans, he didn't keep in touch with with his uh with his pals or even his college friends, but there were a lot of veterans who did.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we would remember, I remember growing up, and there were what were they called, these veteran um VFWs?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, veterans of foreign wars halls all across America.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in New York, there was one uh on my street, uh on McDougal Street, I think between Bleaker and Hassan.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: There was a VFW on McDougal Street, yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the same block where where Bob Dillon lived back in the late 60s, in '94 McDougal, a few doors down, it was a VFW, I believe, unless I'm misremembering, but that's what I remember.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But they were all over the place, and and um, you know, they they were uh, you know, that that was a place where uh we know you know, guys.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there weren't that many women, I don't think, uh attached to these these groups.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were guys who'd hang out in um bars or pubs here, although pubs are closing at a an alarming rate.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: There were places where they could go and watch um yes, sports events, matches that were broadcast.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's changing as well because people watch things at home.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's why all the pubs are closing.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are bars closing in the States?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is there an epidemic of bar closures?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it reminds me of in you know, since we brought up my Greek heritage, we would take trips every now and then, you know, over decades at a time, you know, uh to the and I realized that our last trip that there was something called a cafe neon, which was a a cafe, it was sort of a male sanctuary where men would go and drink coffee and hang out.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was just a a place where it was that recognized that every every community had two or three of them.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: You go and you drink coffee, and and I think they exist, it's a very Middle Eastern thing, it's something from sort of the Levant to go and drink coffee and talk with your friends, and it they've gone away in Greece to a large extent, and you know, uh in the interest of what?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um quality.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, and then right near and right right near where you used to live on Spring Street in Little Italy, there was a little club on Mulberry Street.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was I forget what it was called, but um the guys used to go in there, but I think you had to be um a gangster.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: You had to be a made man.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was called the Ravenite Social Club, where the FBI, it's where the FBI recorded John Gotti, and now it's a shoe store and a very expensive one.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was nice that there was a place where you know gangsters could go and hang out with other gangs.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, meet other gangsters.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Little It were to gangsters meet other gangsters now.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe maybe our next episode is about gangster loneliness.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Gangster an epidemic of gangster loneliness.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: They have to go to shoe stores to to to find each other.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, didn't this used to be in the rave?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: What was it called?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: A Ravenite Social Club.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's exactly the name.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: There should be a clap on that on that little shop.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very it's very small.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It looked kind of grim when I would walk by it when it was still a gangster hangout.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't look like the kind of place I'd want to want to go to.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd probably be killed if I went in there, but but there were I think there was a very fancy coffee machine.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: They had their own coffee machine, like it was Cafe Reggio's or something.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um but anyway, yes, the the the epidemic of gangster loneliness.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just uh part of the overall uh male male loneliness and the lack of uh are guys just bad at meeting other, you know, or uh are straight guys just not this this could this could take us down a rabbit hole of of of of what masculinity is and sensitivity and da-da-da.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: That maybe be another podcast.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but why are we having these problems?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and I have a different problem than you have, because you are lucky enough to live in New York City in Brooklyn, and and and uh one of the things I miss about New York is its friendliness, and I found it very easy to meet people in New York.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if I were still living in New York, even if I had a family there, I think it'd be easier to meet people.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: England is just a I hate to say it because maybe it's a sort of stereotype, but but it's not uh the warmest um um culture, but but everyone in Europe says the same thing about their own country, so maybe it's well accord according to this long uh New York Times essay, there was a bygone era when men would declare platonic love for each other in correspondence, and they would in the 19th century or before.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: When are you talking about early 20th century?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they would hold hands in public, or sometimes you see this in other countries, you'll see.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, not the early 20th century.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think uh F.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Scott Fitzgerald was holding hands with Ernest Hemming.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't think yes, it's what that well, that's the claim.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, wait for it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: He even claims that men would sit on each other's laps.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know now you don't you and I can't do that because that you're you're moving away.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not only have I never seen straight guys, this is something gay guys can do more easily than than we can.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen um, unless maybe they're incredibly drunk, uh uh straight guys sitting on each other's laps.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen any photographs of that.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I uh I don't I don't know what that what that was in that article, wasn't it?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I bought it was in that article.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I think Scott Fitzgerald sat on Ernest McEarnest Hemingway's lap in Paris a couple of times.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Never the other way Hemingway's a big guy, you could sit on it, two guys could sit on his lap.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Hemingway would never sit on Scott Fitzgerald's lap.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was a very one-way.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he knew he was the upper in that relationship, I think.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so anyway, uh you want to if you want to bring back lap sitting for men, lap dancing?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: How about lap dancing?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Bring back straight male lap sitting.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: That could be uh, yeah, we should have t-shirts that put it up.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Part of our new merch.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: But um I thought that was historically, I thought that was more like late 18th century, where men would, you know, would openly weep um, you know, at the theater, or if someone read a poem, they'd be all the puddles of tears.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Men expressed their it was ironic because men could express their sensitive side by crying and kissing and hugging at the same time.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: They were very thin-skinned, and if you um insulted them, you know, it was it was 10 paces at at noon or whatever duels.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, again, you know, we're we're getting back into this um subject of masculinity, which is for another day.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sorry, but you know, the the you know, when we get into talk about the you know the loneliness or the friendship crisis, you know, there's there's also a you know a civic problem.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that if men are dropping out, it's true that young men are dropping out of college.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh women are have more endurance when they are lonely, they tend to stay on the job, they tend to stay uh in college or in any kind of training program.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Men tend to um internalize everything and drop out.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the as the thinking goes, it will destabilize society as young men um fail to live up to different.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Different economic or family structures, civic safety, other things.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: But again, this, you know, you know, another man's man or a very social man once said uh there are uh lies, damn lies, and statistics.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we attribute that to Mark Twain.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, is this a real thing?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we might might look back at, you know, we're talking about the current, this current article, but we might look back um in in uh a bygone area, era of media at Hollywood, you know, what how were men depicted, how were their friendships depicted in in uh the olden days?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, I I can only think of the you know the most famous buddies being Laurel and Hardy.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, who slept in a who slept in the same bed, and so it was never it was never perceived as a gay relationship, but it was always very funny to see them sharing a bed together.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And also they always, if they had wives, their wives seemed to have shotguns, and they're all often on the receiving end of those shotguns, so it was a it was a very um extreme depiction of um marital strife and and and very strong male friendship, and that was a friendship that really uh survived um Hardy getting injured a lot, it seemed to me.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you brought up in an earlier discussion we had um three stooges, and I don't think they were ever friends, they were always very towards each other.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if that's male friendship, you know, uh leave it, leave it out for me because uh they were I I recall you hit me in the head once with a mallet, an oversized mallet, didn't you?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I took a pair of scissors to your nose once.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the only way straight men can express their their endearment and love for each other is through violence.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember Fight Club, that was the premise of Fight Club, I think.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're always punching, you know, in order to reach each other or feel something, they had to punch each other's lights out.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I I think uh you know, the three stooges and and Laurel and Hardy, I think those were the precursors, you might call them the proto-buddy movie or the precursor to the buddy movie.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the but buddy you were going.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: We we started maybe in the 40s, you'd got Bing Crosby and Bob Hope with a road.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, right, yeah.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a two of buddies Harry Lewis and Dean Martin, um, who were very different characters, and then uh up in the what did we have in the 60s?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: But oh well, I Walter Matzhau and and uh Jack Lemon.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Jack Lemon.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the odd couple.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was the film, the original film.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was the uh that was a great depiction of of uh of male friendship.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that remember they both broke it up with their wives.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they end up together in this enormous upper west side apartment.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to us now, it looks like big enough you could fit like three families in there, and it's just these two guys again trying not to run into each other after they've had a bit of a spat.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a classic two-bedroom, two-bath, and one of those sort of semi-modern white brick buildings that you'd see in the upper east side, I think.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I, you know, when Neil Simon wrote the play, it was it was interesting because you know, these two were out on the curb, and they had and the question is, can men live together?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Can they live?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that's the that's the question that when it was adapted for television, that was the to that was the question, the the rhetorical question.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Two men live together without driving each other nuts or killing each other.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember how they phrased it, but that was sort of the that was sort of the tagline for the for the sitcom.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and the answer was yeah, I mean they did live, they maintained that that was kind of an endearing friendship, but again, it was friendship through you know uh animosity because there were there were opposites, right?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one was a sports writer and the other was a commercial photographer, commercial photographer, yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, but now we're talking about 60 years ago.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's go into more recent.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: What are the male friendships depicted more recently?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, friends, it's three women and three guys, it's not just well, there were a lot of buddy cop shows at one time.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: There was 48 hours.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Was Lethal Weapon?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Would that be considered a buddy cop?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Lethal Weapon 48 hours rush hour, which was which had three iterations.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what about the blues brothers?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Were they they were oh they weren't brother, they were brothers, they weren't friends, but I mean you could be a friend, you could have a brother and be friends.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I forget they actually were brothers, weren't they?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or were they were they just technically blues brothers?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Though they were, they had the same.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, they were they were literally brothers in the script.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess that's a kind of friendship.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so but that always made that was misleading because it always made it look easier than it was.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe that's why some of those those shows were really were really popular.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um they were fantasies in some ways, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Of male, male friendship.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you there's what about the um the uh the the apetow.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a apatow?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, now we're now we're getting into more modern times.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: These are the early aughts, and Judd Apato mastered this cra this art of converting the rom-com to buddy movies using pretty crude adolescent humor, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: But injecting it with with male vulnerability.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: So think about the movie Super Bad.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: You you phrased it so well in these notes, you said Apato realized that the emotional breakup and makeup beats of a traditional rom com worked perfectly well when applied to two straight male friends.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really that's really interesting.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, although what the beats of a rom-com are are really all they are are guy meets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just guy meets guy, guy loses guy, guy gets guy back.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of it's just the same, it's the same structure, but it's an interesting observation.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: That film, um I Love You Man by Judd Apato.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't it was that's that is not it is not Judd Apateau, but it couldn't, it probably I Love You Man was it's 2009, probably could not have come into existence without Judd Apateau because I've heard him just described as the godfather of the modern bromance.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Romance, but it's it's totally Apatoian, if that's a word.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the premise is there, isn't the premise is that is that Paul Rudd is about to get married, and his fiance um kind of alarms him by saying, you know, you don't have any male, she has a lot of female friends, and she says, You don't have any male friends, you've got to go out and get a male friend.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he thinks about it, realizes that's right, he doesn't have any male friends.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he goes out, and it's kind of a funny montage of him, like in bars, trying to meet a straight guy as a friend, and and and and misconstrued, you know, other guys misconstruing the situation.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he finally meets a Jason Siegel.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it Jason Siegel?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's Jason Siegel for sure, who's hilarious.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jason Siegel, who is a single guy.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he even has a girlfriend.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he sleeps with different women, but uh the various women, but he doesn't have a steady girlfriend, and they end up having a very funny friendship, and they and and and Jason Siegel has has the shed behind his house, it's somewhere in in L.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's sort of a yeah, it's sort of a man cave with musical instruments and technology.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instruments, and and they and they and they um they play music, they what's the word?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they play music together and uh these instruments there.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's very funny.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's very funny, and uh that's follows that structure exactly.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Guy meets guy, guy loses guy, guy gets guy back.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: It has a dazzling cast, too.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's Paul Runnels, Eagle, Rashida Jones, I think, plays his his fiance.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um JK Simmons, John Favreau, uh Jane Curtin, Andy Sandberg, Nick Kroll.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a it's a pretty star-studded early arts film that any anyone could enjoy.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the that's one of the basic texts of the male friendship um uh issue.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I urge our viewers and listeners, if you're interested in the subject, find that film because it is very, it is very funny.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it under it it didn't solve anything.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: You'd think that film was so good, it would have solved the international deficit of uh male friendship.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it didn't, unfortunately.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a and you know, it's a people are on on top of it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, our listeners probably know Scott Galloway, uh who some people have now described as Andrew Tate with an MBA.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's how he describes himself.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, he's sort of a great antidote uh to people like Elon Musk, because what's made Scott Galloway interesting, more interesting, is that he was he's a senti millionaire who who made a choice.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: He could have kept going to go uh to the high water mark of earning a billion dollars, but uh instead he's got he has to settle with a hundred million dollars.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I feel badly for him.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: A few hundred million, uh, but it's you know that would that would have been the white whale, and a lot of people pursue that that high water mark.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, how is he the Andrew Tate?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: How does he why does he compare himself to Andrew Tate?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because he's been speaking out, he's been speaking out a lot about um you know this male and teen crisis that you know we're trying to understand right now.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he has a book called uh Notes on Being a Man.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: That that's something he's been he's done.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: There's also a bestseller by Roy Wood Jr., uh the comedian, the man of many fathers.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he he reflected on having a son and how he had to rely on uh, you know, without a father, an absent father, he had to rely on other types of mentors, uh including, you know, co-workers at restaurants or fellow comedians, different mentors he's found along the way.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, again, it's it's locking into this male loneliness crisis, male friendship crisis that um might or might not exist.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it exists.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it does exist.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's just how you I guess how you define I think it's a it's redefining it because there was, you know, again, I don't want to go off the rails here and talk about get into masculinity, but it's sort of like the strong silent type of the post-war era that we saw with you know a lot of great actors of the 40s and 50s gave way to sort of you know, sort of us, you know, dot people like Dustin Hoffman.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh I don't know who who else I just mentioned them.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Al Pacino, Warren, Warren Beatty, they were very different from well, I actually would have gone back to you know, James Dean was maybe the first, you know, he sure was.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was that was a thundercrack because they would he didn't have any, I guess Montgomery Clift.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those those two guys were a different kind of uh man.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: But as we as we encounter this, uh the real crisis to me is this the manosphere where we've transitioned from the you know the male ideal of being the strong silent type to being the strong violent type, or at least violent in imagery, browbeating people, bullying, uh worshipping wealth.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we need we need an antidote, at least there.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that's it's kind of an uh an aberration in the media.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the one the one that comes to mind, you know, you know, there's Roy Wood, there's Scott Galloway, but I think you know, really the ideal of male friendship has come to the fore with Ted Lasso.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that show is all about men finding ways to get along and ultimately achieve goals working as a team.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it occurs to me, and that's about an American who moves to London, doesn't know anyone.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Good point.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe what I should be doing is uh managing a football team somewhere here, even though I don't know anything about sports.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that would be a way for me to meet some English people.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: But um maybe you could take a maybe you could take a an obscure team and get it into the Premier League, which is totally realistic.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um we could do going back.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what works about you know our our friendship?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: How have we maintained our friendship?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this we could this could have easily not, you know, we could have um certainly when I moved to England, that could have ended our our friendship.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Although I've you know I've stayed friends with my with my New York pals, but but not like you, you know, we were talking every day.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's how this podcast developed.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: We realize we're talking on FaceTime pretty much every day, discussing all these topics and having these interesting discussions about the intersection of culture and politics from a boomer perspective.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, that's a good idea for a podcast.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we've enjoyed working together on projects.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's one of the you know, we we uh we don't agree on everything that's uh that's uh just as well, I suppose.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, it's it's funny because I you know uh you know, I I think I think the collaboration, our professional collaborations and writing scripts and book proposals have have come out of our friendship.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it doesn't work the other way around.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have friends on the job, you work in a job, but the the job is kind of like a it's like a hothouse or a terrarium.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: But as soon as you leave, you don't have the conditions to sustain the relationship.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: People, you know, you work together with people, you appreciate their work ethos, uh, their work ethic, sorry, and uh, but then there's some you know, you start trying to hang out, doesn't always work.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe they always see the same people after work.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're stuck in a room, you know, or an office with them for eight hours, nine hours.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I I didn't I developed only very a couple friendships from I was a freelancer, so I wasn't often at the same office day after day, but I did meet people that have uh remained friends of mine.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I think for our friendship, I mean, I you know, you often read my mind, I read your mind.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we can talk about um, you know, our disgust with you know the current regime in Washington, and that's what I'll call it a regime.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: That, but we can go deeper on that in another subject.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: We uh we could talk about obscure movies, uh, we like Steve Martin, we like comedians.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we often share the same taste.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't think we often disagree.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: I and I think we you know you could describe our taste as you know, I I think we like we like a little cynicism in our in our tea, in our media tea.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we don't like uh you know, we don't like um mistreatment of of fictional characters, we don't like authors who mistreat their characters.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: We agree on a lot of stuff that helps.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: But and we're I this is going back to the boomer thing because we have the same reference points culturally, and I think that's a big thing of our friendship too.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: My cousin, my cousin Richard, who's a couple of years older than I am, uh, he's in New York.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's another uh long distance, I mean he's uh he's family, but but I I have these wonderful long hour-long conversations with him a lot, and yeah, and we just have very um you know uh mutual uh you know reference points, musically, culturally, politically as well.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I say politically because we you know we can discuss, you know, and and and you and I can discuss politics going back to you know to the Nixon era, the Johnson era, even though we were kids.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have a we have a historical perspective that that that really matches up that goes back you know 50 years.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that makes it easier.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Although I will make I will point out that you have a lot of younger friends.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very impressed how you meet, and I'm gonna unmask you here as a as a someone I think who has a lot of friends and makes friends easily.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're very engaging and people like you, um, and you're very outgoing.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you are in Brooklyn, which is a very you know friendly place, but you make friends, I think, quite easily, and a lot of them are young, younger people, isn't that right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is that fair?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to defend yourself here.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think because we live in a young community here in Williamsburg, New York, um, you know, borough of Brooklyn, I part of the borough of Brooklyn, everyone's young and uh they sort of take us for who we are.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I wouldn't be surprised that I there are people who don't want to be my friend because they see the color of my hair, um, and sometimes my attitude, which might seem old-fashioned to some people or formal or something.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that that's the exception to the rule, isn't it?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you might notice those, but but you see, we have some terrific friends here in in our in our they're in their 20s and their 30s, they're they're actors, they're artists, they're worthy of them.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're they're they're they're they're crypto crypto bros.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have friends.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have no cafe.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: You meet some people in your in your cafes, right?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I go to I go to cafes in London, and it's it's not like it's not like it is in Brooklyn.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's not really um, at least I haven't found found it to be the case.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe we are different personalities.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: I you may, I think you're probably more I think you're probably better at meeting people than I am.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, there is a there is that term cafe society, right?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's you know that that's there that's one thing we don't have a shortage of around here.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was telling Carol this morning, we seem to, you know, you know, East Williamsburg, this it's you know, Williamsburg is massive, and we're in East Williamsburg, and it's still developing even after 16 years of being here.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: We seem to only have tattoo parlors, um, nail salons, bodegas, uh, and coffee cafes.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's so you know, we're living in a cafe society here, and it's easy to sit down.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: People are not a it's not a bar, it's not a bar society as much anymore.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say it's more a cafe society than a bar society?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we do have a we do have a ton of bars, but they've kind of predated us.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, any anything new seems to be in those four categories.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, no, there's a very healthy bar society, but you know, we we skew a little bit in this neighborhood to the bohemian, although in the last 10 years, you know, I see a lot of t-shirts that say Stanford and Nantucket, and the complexion of the new the complexions of the new arrivals are more Caucasian than anything else.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know inevitably someone's wearing a Stanford t-shirt, they're unlikely to have actually gone to Stanford, or if it says, you know, the vineyard or Cape Cod, or maybe maybe they went there and picked up one of, but isn't that you see here?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm go to you know, if you're in France or Italy or Spain, you you go you count people that probably never set foot in America, have like you know, Harvard, Harvard shirts on, like it's not always representative of of their actual matriculation.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let me ask you this if if if there is a male loneliness crisis um among young men, or even uh men our age, uh are are boomers to blame for it?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are we are we maybe you are, I'm not.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why would we be to blame for it?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because we we can be to blame for everything else, economically and and musically and whatever, culturally, but friendship, you can lay that on us as well.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Explain yourself, sir.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the you know, the complaint is that young men have no have lost their opportunity uh in the in the job market, and that boomers have taken all the sucked, extracted all the wealth from the economy.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different thing.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the accusation.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know you can say they have more time to meet meet people, they're not at a job.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not being very cynical and jaded in that response, but I don't quite see how that has to do with unless they can't afford to move to New York, but that's not a friendship issue.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's it's the economic there's an economic argument to be made there.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: Although I would argue back that um, and I I won't go on long about this, but uh a book came out a few years ago um called The Rise and Fall of American Growth.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was 2016 by an economist named Robert G.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: G.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Gordon.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: Other economists call the book magisterial, which is, I don't know what that word means.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Does it mean like your majesty?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or does it mean like you're a magistrate?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or I don't know.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: But he argued that there was a hundred-year period in human civilization from 1870 to 1970, that had such impressive, profound growth in productivity that we'll never see it again, maybe in the history of the world.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's pressing, of course, but I don't still still don't see what it has to do with friendship.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: That seems to be well what it has to do, I think, is that uh it it if men have been locked out of the the job market and are lonely and can't make friends, it's not it's not the economy's fault.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the boomers' fault on the economy.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: But you might also say you could blame boomers for being bad parents or bad um role models, perhaps.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we didn't raise our children, we raised some of these lonely, un uh uncompanionable young men.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's our fault.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's another argument.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't want to get down this rabbit hole too much, but I mean, uh, young people are so much on their social media on their phones, supposedly they're not reaching out and and actually meeting up with people, they are just communicating over their over their tablets and phones.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't have to video games and video games.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: We were not distracted in that level.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to meet up with someone, you didn't see them on their phone.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: You had to go to actually meet up with them.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe younger, younger people have lost the uh the not the sort of ability, or they don't have they're not functional um in in physically meeting up with people.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: The birth rate's gone down too, right?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the people are not having sex as much anymore.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have a declining birth rate.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: That might be related to that.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, less people, less friends.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a few people to choose from.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's uh, you know, we um um yeah, I mean, there was a I may there's almost a joke, but in Australia, where they banned social media for under 16-year-olds, there were there were kids complaining about how am I gonna reach my friends?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Call function on your phone, you can actually phone them, or you can meet them up in person.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually, you know, see them.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: So and that is you know, that is that's been called another, you know, epidemic.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Epidemic, I don't know which epidemic it is, epidemic of um of uh being glued to your phone or or phone glued gluedness or phone stuck on phone.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Adhesive adhesive telecommunications.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Adhesive telecommunications.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: I met you, let's see.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: I met you, I don't remember exactly the year, it was in the 90s, and it was a uh a gathering of writers.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting theme here.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: Our friend Laurel Toby organized it because she was freelancing and she was working at home all the time, writing magazine articles, and felt lonely.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: So she wanted to bring writers together who were in similar situations, and that was you, and that was me.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: She was great, and this is a shout out to Laurel Toby because she she did she did so much good for a lot of uh we us writers who were quite isolated in our in our in our you might not remember this, but you you wrote a play called White Lies, and you had you staged it twice, I think.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I I went to the first one with with a date.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't married, and I had not met my wife.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think I think I was very impressed.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was impressive to her that I had such erudite friends.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had a it was part of an infrastructure of getting plays read and staged, and I knew directors, I knew actors.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um we had some great collaborations.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: We we wrote two or three book proposals, a screenplay, a radio proposal.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: We did a radio radio proposal, which was hilarious and fun.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: We proposed to uh national public radio or public radio internet.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you can find a friend that you can work with on projects, uh creative creativity, that's a that's a good move.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering now if if if maybe guys don't need lots of friends, but you need at least one or two if they're good enough friends.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm being presumptuous to want to have lots of other friends.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I it might be important to define what a what a male friendship is.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think with you and me and a few other blessed folk, I can be on the phone for an hour or over an hour on end without even looking at the time and having a great conversation, laughing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um laughing is really sort of an essential element for me.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure how it is for other men in their male friendships, but joking around is um pretty great, pretty great pastime.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I don't know.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: You and I don't watch NFL together and we don't go out and play touch football.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, our friend Charles Salzberg, who we featured on the last show, last I heard, he was in a touch football team in Central Park that I think lasted 20 years.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not I'm not sure why it didn't know you.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: He knows lots of people.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Charles is impressive.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: I look at his Facebook posts, and he's always he's always uh posing with lots of people.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so are you.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're very social, I can see from from your Facebook uh posts.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um my Facebook posts, if they have any pictures, are just of me because I'm incredibly narcissistic and I like taking selfies.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: You are so selfish.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very selfish.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean you may you may you made reference to this earlier, um, about gay guys having this infrastructure of friendship.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been impressed by that.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um it can be slightly uh exclusive because um there's not always a lot of straight guys in that in that group.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I have a gay friend in London, and um he seems to know just about everybody, and um, I think they're mostly gay, but but it's a large, it's an impressive, it's an impressive crowd, you know, and very creative.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I think the other part of having a male friendship is uh trust and reliability.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: I I a friend of mine once said, I'll call so-and-so if I need to get a gun or hide a body, that's a little dramatic.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'll settle for someone who will help me move on a rainy weekend.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Or you know, I if I'm in a legal jam or need some advice, if I could, if I have there's someone I can turn to uh to talk about um, you know, money I've lost in crypto.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, that doesn't, that's not really it, but um trust and reliability, someone and you can, you know, besides letting your guard down and having a few laughs, um, you know, that's that's another element of friendship, I would say.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think um same city friendships are different from long distance friendships because you know we can't get together three months.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get together to go to the theater or a movie or show, you know.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: Our friendship is uh uh a largely um sort of sort of reactive in a way to the things that we we've been doing.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love hearing about when you go to the theater or when you go to readings or they're part of a open mic, and all these things are are are really of uh of great interest to me.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and also we we also follow the news, not just politics, but other goings on in the news, you know, whether it's um you you just cited Australia's uh 16-year-old rule for using uh social media or uh you know anyone of interest that that emerges from the zeitgeist uh worth talking about.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and you you would actually encourage me to get a digital subscription to to um New York magazine, partly because I want to have more of a sense of what's going on culturally um in uh in New York and read all their review, their theater reviews and their book reviews and stuff.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you know, yeah, not to get off topic, but I I it at this moment, on this date, Saturday, May 23rd, I still love New York magazine.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: It is, I think, under praised and underappreciated.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: They have the best critics, uh, they're funny as hell.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: The the political coverage is very good.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's almost a unicorn at this point because there's so few magazines left.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a it's a success, and it is a unicorn.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very good point.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's a successful magazine, it's in print, they have ads and they're profitable.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the reason I I made the timeline so sensitive is because we found out this week that um uh a Murdoch scion bought the whole the whole publication.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we have by the way, he's the progressive son, he's not the crazy right-wing nutzoid who's Lackland uh is running Fox News.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: James is the guy who practically kind of left the family business because he didn't like the politics, I believe.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: I may be misrepresenting it.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I I was alarmed when I heard that a murdock had purchased New York magazine, which was briefly owned by his father for 10 years back in the 70s and early 80s, he sold it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I don't I don't think it's gonna be you know being lurched lurching to the right, but I I I'm a bit worried about the changes that are gonna happen.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: I guess if there'll be a lot of money behind it, at least you can say that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I mean you know, there's a lot to worry about in the media right now, you know, starting with CBS and uh the late great late night show, late show, the Sky Dance merger.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there's a lot to talk about.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paramount and Warner Brothers uh merger is uh just uh that's a whole other topic, and it's we're getting away from male friendship here, you know, rambling, uh friendly conversations.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: You ramble all the time.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm breaking up with you.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know what?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is a good time to talk about our headquakes.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: Good one, yeah.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do um, I'll do I'll go first.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I just got back from Paris for a week where it rained every day, but it was lovely to be there.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's all our friends, and um, it's a it's from Paris from New sorry from London, Paris is just two hours and 20 minutes on a train.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a very easy place to get to.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: You go to St.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Pancras Station, and in two hours and 20 minutes you're at God and all, and you're in a different world.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's if you went too if you went two hours if I went two hours and twenty minutes, I'd be in Allentown.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think here you could be in um in Manchester.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not that different from London or Birmingham.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Paris is another world, and it's just such a different culture.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't help noticing that there's just hardly any dogs in Paris.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: I live in Richmond, in the borough of Richmond in London, which seems to be the doggiest part of the city, although there are just dogs everywhere in London.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of pet grooming shops and their vets.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just a very there's a dog uh uh culture here, and in uh Paris is none of that.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but and a friend of mine uh recommended this museum I visit, which is the Musee de la Chasse et la Nature, and it turns out to be a museum about hunting.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, hunting, okay, hunting a hunting museum in the hunting, it celebrates hunting and the culture of hunting, and there are rooms with stuffed taxidermied animals and racks of guns, it's very bizarre.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: My children would absolutely hate this museum, and and I was a bit taken aback by it.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it was really interesting.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of these bonkers uh collections that's in Paris, and I'm still trying to I wrote a substack about it, but I'm actually still trying to decipher what that was all about.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things it's about is just Paris is just another world from London, it's a very different culture.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't it be are French famously contrarian?
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like they love Jerry Lewis in the 70s, and they hate stuff and love stuff that no one else they see that as just common sense.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: They don't think they're being contrarian.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's a beautiful culture in so many ways, and and if they celebrate intellectuals, they celebrate their cultural figures.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a a national academy of you know cultural, you know, the people who are not politicians or billionaires.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a wonderful culture on so many levels, and uh, and that's a very my very superficial headquake.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's yours?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_02: My headquake is a it's where doxing and affordability converge, and it also speaks to my age, um, and maybe being in touch, out of touch with Zaron Mamdani.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Zoran Mamdani has been um enigmatic to me because I've I was so wrong about him, but I'm not the only one.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how are you wrong about him?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he you know, first of all, he came back from one percent in the Emerson poll before the primaries and took it all away from an established uh um celebrated name in democratic politics, Cuomo, forced I I thought you meant you got it wrong since he's been become mayor.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: That you well, it's it's sort of I'm trying to adapt to him.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, he's what he did, he you know, he's just unmatched on social media.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he's he's fantastic in front of the camera.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he was the MC for um, you know, uh the sort of the New York City's equivalent of the um what you call it, the White House correspondence dinner.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he did something recently that that disturbed me.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: He he's um promoting a millionaire's tax.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um he's doing it through second second homes, pied de terre.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and pied de terre in French, literally, maybe you can translate it.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's supposed to be a tiny little place that you keep for yourself when you're going to another city.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a foothold, literally means a foothold.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a foothold in a city.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a small, a small flat, small apartment that you don't live in full time, that you can't.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so he he took a camera out to Midtown Manhattan and he pointed at one of the new luxury towers, and he pointed out the foothold of Ken Griffin, who runs Citadel Capital.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: He's a famous hedge fund guy, and he basically doxxed him.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Ken Griffin lives here, his his foothold, his pieditaire is$25 million.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's not here that much.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like many of people in these buildings, he's not here that much.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I I got it, you know, coming off the United Healthcare murder.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we also lost we also lost a Blackstone group executive, one uh, you know, uh a woman who was highly accomplished, oh really uh high salaried, and uh, you know, a mom of two kids, you know, when when we had uh shooting in Midtown, um, God, when was that?
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: Nine months ago.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so you know, is that a wise thing to do?
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I was you mentioned my young friend.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I raised the topic, you know, about mom Donnie and I.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: And my friend, Ariel, who has great concerns about affordability, said, you know what Ken Griffin should have said when that happened?
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of saying I'm leaving New York, he should say, I'm gonna pay my taxes.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: I deserve the the population of New York deserves my tax money, and I shouldn't be so stingy with it.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I good luck.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: Good luck.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh no, it's an interesting point of view, and it I think it speaks to um a lot of anger in the electorate uh about yeah, I kind of feeling left out, you know.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that, you know.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh anger, we have the same issue here in London.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have all these uh oligarchs who um have huge pieditaires, places that they don't uh live full-time, they don't pay local taxes.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't I hate doxing of anyone, it's dangerous, as you point out.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: It really is dangerous, and it's just it's grandstanding from the mayor.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's it's you know, it's it's very sort of performative.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it is performative.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have a friend um who says doxing is is a third rail, and his name is Matthew White.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: He lives at 123 Mel Street in Douchebag, Illinois.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean that's not that's not his real name or his address.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have his credit card number here for reasonable visa 4973 88684.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um his billing addresses.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, doxing is horrible for to anyone, and it's far more, it's very dangerous now, you know, and it's the kind of thing that um Elon Musk does, and the core our our uh esteemed president does, and it can usually just done online or social media, but to physically go down and and stand, it's this it's a definition of grandstanding.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's grandstanding across the street from this building.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Mamdani.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I was pretty uh skeptical of Mamdani, and I'm I I'm I'm still open to um the verdict on him.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's only been mayor for six months, and see what he does.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, hopefully his heart is in the right place.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_02: He he's provocative.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a lot of uh what I call Mamdani derangement syndrome.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um people who are on the far right who think there shouldn't be free buses or or city-owned supermarkets.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: There are people who are very pro-Israel who study very closely his social media, his wife's social media, the likes, the dislikes that they the evils of social media that that's a like watermark that you never get never get rid of.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, all I can say is um, you know, good luck to Mamdani.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he succeeds, I hope he does well.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he achieves a lot of what he said he wanted.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: And as you've pointed out, it's a tough job.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thankless job.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's a thing, the thankless, the most politically thankless job in in America, I would have thought.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and for him, it's not a stepping stone, certainly to the presidency, because he can't run for president, he's foreign board.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that right?
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: He still isn't bored of the UCLA.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the rule.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he can he can run for the Senate, he can run for Congress, and maybe he will.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I only say that because I think I only bring that out because I think sometimes there are politicians who think that um being mayor of New York can be a stepping stone to very high office.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think Bloomberg thought that.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought he was a very good, very good mayor.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it didn't help him in the least.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_02: Many mayors, many mayors thought that.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, so anyway, I support Mamdani in in as far as I want him to you know succeed.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't, you know, uh you're right, a lot of right-wing people have Mamdani um derangements in him.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of Americans don't understand what socialism is.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, you know, they they think it's the same as communism, and they don't even know what communism is.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's one of these um it doesn't exist, at least my opinion.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't exist anywhere.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy accusation and shorthand for insane.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's insane.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's shorthand, that's what it is.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's sort of a shorthand.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it just it just unmasks uh people and commentators are just being just idiots, I think.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, getting back to our our male friendship issue, I think it I think it's a it's a terrific subject.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we've sorted anything out except to bring bring up the fact that that that it's a real thing, and and I think a lot of people can, a lot of men can um can identify with it.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: We welcome any comments any lonely men may have.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: If they need a friend, if they want to be our friends, leave a comment.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where can they leave a comment, Jim?
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_02: Is it on our on our YouTube?
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_02: They can please like and comment on any podcast directory that you might use, whether it's Spotify or Apple Pods or iHeartRadio.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're here.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're here, we're here for you.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's well, thanks a lot, Jim.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been an interesting discussion.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's another uh episode of Boomer Has It, and we will see catch up with you next time.