Transcript of E562 Richard Reeves

Richard Reeves, thanks for joining us today, brother. Yeah, I'm really thrilled to be here. Yeah, we appreciate it, man. You want to move that in a little bit for me if you don't mind? Yeah, sure. You are British?

By birth, I'm American now. Okay, you're American now? Yeah, I became a US citizen in 2016, so I'm very proud of this country.

Oh, welcome. Nice. Thank you. You're the President for the American Institute for Boys and Men? Yeah.

New think tank. God knows we need more think tanks, right? That's what America is really clamoring for. It's like more scholars sitting in think tanks producing charts. Honestly, I was in another think tank for 10 years before that, the Brooklyn's Institution, huge think tank in Washington, DC. Great job. And I got to tell you, it was not in my life plan to To be in a think tank? To create another one. No, actually being in a think tank is great. What that means is you basically just get paid good money to write stuff and say stuff that you're interested in.

And what happens to a lot of that information from think tanks?

Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the critics, they say it just gathers dust on people's shelves. Maybe two people in Congress read it, one New York Times journalist reads it. So there is this whole thing now that think tanks used to produce policy papers and then grateful legislation as members of Congress, we would say, thank you, we'll go and turn that into a law. And that's not how it works anymore. And so the whole question of how do you influence law? How do you influence policy? I think it's a really big question now. And So there's a big question mark against this whole idea about quotes think tank. I certainly didn't plan to start a new one.

But it seems like this one is important. That's one of the reasons that I wanted to get to talk to you today, because a lot of our listeners are men and boys. I know Scott Galloway was on, and he had mentioned that you were his godfather of information or somebody that he really looked up to. And I did also see you were born on the fourth of July. Is that right? Correct. Do they kick you out of Britain if you're on the- That would be great.

I think it's just have a rule. Everyone who's born on the fourth of July gets automatic US citizenship, but then gets deported from the UK. But it's weird because I've always had that. Then I actually came to the US in the '90s for the Guardian paper. I was a journalist for quite a few years. I just always loved America, ended up marrying an American.

Do you think it was because of your birthday at all or no? Because it's just interesting.

It would sound weird to say yes, wouldn't it? But if you think there's no such thing It's a coincidence. I've always loved the fact that I was born on the fourth of July, and now I'm here. It's great. Everyone has a big party for my birthday. Actually, one of the things that I've really thought about as an immigrant, and when you say immigrant, you probably don't think of someone like me, but I'm a proud immigrant, is that people who are born here don't actually appreciate what it means sometimes to be a citizen. My citizenship ceremony, which I did in a hurry, actually, because I wanted to be able to vote and wanted to get into the whole civic life. I was surrounded by people in tears. Really? Yeah. There's people from Iran, there's people from Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever, refugees, a whole bunch of different people, some people from Mexico, and they're waving their flags, saying the pledge of allegiance, you're welcome by the President. And there wasn't really a dry eye last by the end of it. And so I actually now think that every high schooler in the US should go to a citizenship ceremony.

That's a great idea.

Just experience it, because I don't think if you're born here, you can take it a bit for granted what it means to be a citizen. But to go and experience what it's like for people to become a citizen, I expected it to be more... I had a green card, and I thought, yeah, but I want to be a citizen as well. I actually was incredibly moved by the whole experience.

Yeah, you don't think about the gift of your own citizenship, right? And you don't think about what others go through to get it. Yeah. They used to have... I know whenever I was growing up, you had the pledge of allegiance. There was definitely a Even though the pledge of allegiance was a small thing, it's one of those traditional things that made you feel like a part of something, right? It was like a traditional practice that created a commonality between kids. We thought it was lame sometimes, but sometimes you didn't. At certain points of the year, if certain things were going on in the culture, it meant more to you. But yeah, that's- And it's also just a ritual.

We've come to undervalue ritual.

They erode from our society.

The point of a ritual. It's not just like you can You can overthink what the words mean. You can overthink exactly what it means. But there's something about just the ritual of it. My son is at the University of Tennessee, and he explains. He evolves, maybe. Yeah. But actually, when his friends come down to a Tennessee game, And they're at a northeastern college or a small liberal arts college, what really strikes them is less the game, and it's more the fact that there's the pledge of allegiance, that there's a prayer, that the jets go over, that there's fireworks, that they come out through the tea. There's a whole bunch of ritual around it, which is actually really beautiful. I think sometimes we overthink the content of the ritual and don't actually just recognize it's the fact of the ritual that really matters.

Yeah. People start looking at, well, what are the words of the pledge of allegiance? It didn't matter. It was just that we got up.

Do I mean every word of this.

We got up and we did it together. I don't think there's anything wrong if you live in a country and you're a member of it to pledge allegiance to that country. I feel like-Yeah, correct. Because otherwise, then what are you? You're just a passer Why are you working for another country? What's your real modus operandi then, I guess?

I have one friend, actually, who's from Israel. And when he came, he gave up his Israeli citizenship because he believes that you cannot have more than one citizenship. You cannot have dual citizenship is a contradiction because you can only be pledging your allegiance to one sovereign nation. I love that. I love that, too. I will confess that I have kept my British passport. Oh, you have? Yeah.

I make If you had to choose, what do you do then?

Us, no question. Wow.

Yeah, I get it.

There's a reason why everyone really wants to come here.

Yeah, dude, the rock lives here.

Right.

You know? Yes.

Is that the main reason people come here?

No, I don't think so. But that would be a great idea if every class had to go watch that, had to go watch that ceremony.

They always need volunteers of them as well to help out with the paperwork, stuff like that. And so you could just have some going every time. I just think it'd be really nice before you graduate high school. I would just say to anyone I was listening, right? If you're thinking about a good cool thing to do, volunteer at your local citizenship center and watch the people go through the process of becoming a US citizen, and that might make you appreciate it a bit more.

I can't believe that it's not mandatory in classes or in school that you have to go see that. Maybe that's something that one of these think tanks could change.

Well, I proposed it, but let's see if it will change. But we can do it ourselves as well. Yeah, we could. There's nothing stopping us.

You're the President for the American Institute for Men and Boys. So what is that institute?

It's a research and advocacy organization. What we're trying to do is the basic premise here is there are a lot of ways in which boys and men are struggling in our country right now. And there are no institutions, there's no organizations whose job it is to basically wake up every day and draw attention to that with data, with facts in a way that will hopefully raise awareness of it. It's this huge asymmetry. I really noticed it in the pandemic. So when When the pandemic hit, there were a lot of reports about how it was going to affect women and girls. There was a lot of concern about employment, domestic violence, a whole bunch of real concerns, and a lot of press coverage for that. Those were perfectly legitimate coming from women's think tanks from the UN, from the White House, et cetera. But I noticed that actually the college enrollment for men had dropped seven times more than for women in the first year of the pandemic. Seven times difference in the Stop. Just crazy. Is that true? It is true. Then the numbers got a little bit revised, and it's partly because the men were more likely to be going to trade school and stuff, which you just couldn't do online.

But it wasn't just that. It hit male education harder than female education, number one. Number two, men were dying a lot more from COVID. Covid was killing a lot more men.

You mean the actual disease or just the loneliness or the disconnection? No, the disease. Oh, the disease.

Men were much more vulnerable COVID. Last time I checked, we'd lost at least 100,000 more men than women. And that's not to be expected because actually it affected older people. Covid killed older people a lot more, and there are more older women. So if anything I just think it go the other way, but it didn't because actually men were much, much more vulnerable to the disease. And no one was really researching that. No one was producing reports on that. No one was writing articles about that. And it really occurred to me that was because it was no one's job. There wasn't an American Institute for Boys and Men, but I can assure you that if we'd existed then, we'd have been pushing out lots of information about how COVID was affecting boys education and men's education, and also killing men in massively higher numbers.

Well, for sure, because I think also, I don't know if ever in my life there's been a lot of organizations where it's like, Hey, men need help. It's like everything is that women need help with this, children. And certainly that makes sense. I always think back to women and children first, like when the Titanic was sinking or something like that. It's like women and children first, right? And that's probably what most men would want as well. But at a certain point, you're like, Hey, we exist. What are we doing here? What was your first relationship with your dad or something? Just so we have some personal attachment to this conversation as well, What was it like with your dad when you were a kid? Because that's usually people's first male role model, yeah?

Yeah, my dad was amazing. Oh, wow. Just amazing. And is an amazing grandad to my sons as well. And so I was given the greatest gift that I think anybody can ever get, which is two parents who both loved me, still together, still loving us. And that sense of... Somebody wants This sounds like a bit of a- It's crazy that I'm shocked.

It's crazy that it's become in this world that that's just a shocking thing.

Yeah, and it's not like they were perfect, to be clear. But it's like parenting is never going to be about perfection. It's always going to be about the arc. I think you almost get a parental grade point average across the whole decades it takes to raise a kid. You're going to have bad days and good days, and you're going to get some days where you get a really bad grade. That dad I'm not an F today. He said some stuff he shouldn't have said, did some stuff he shouldn't have done to me. But then you got a B the next day and an A. What's my overall? And they were genuinely amazing. And I've come to realize that that is the most extraordinary gift. I was going to say it sounds like a bit of a brag, but I remember someone came up to me once after I'd done a talk or something like that.

There's your dad right there.

Get a gander. And they just said-What's his name? Phil? David.

David, yeah. That's a proper British name as well.

I said, this guy's dad loved him. You can tell his dad loved him. So I loved you. I was like, that's so weird. And I was like, I don't know that you can just... There's something in people, men, who were loved by their dads. And You could never quantify that. There's no chart you could ever make about that. But I've never doubted my father's love for me. And he was a coach for us. He taught us to swim. He taught us to drive. But he was also the breadwinner. And I had this moment with my dad that made a huge impression on me, because of his generation, he had to be the breadwinner. He married very young, and he lost his job. He became unemployed a couple of times. He worked in manufacturing during the '80s, which was a tough time in the UK and the US. There was a time he was unemployed for quite a long time. But every morning he got up and he shaved and he put on a shirt and a tie. His concession was he didn't put a jacket on. He didn't fully dress up because he was trying to get a white collar job.

And he had breakfast with us. And I asked him one day, I said, dad, you're going into the spare room to type out resumes to try and get a job. Why are you shaving? Why are you still putting a shirt on? You don't have a job. And he looked at me and he said, I do have a job. My job is to get another job so that I can take care of you. And he worked as hard at getting a job as he ever had at his job because he knew that we needed him. And although I think that fatherhood has really changed, it's been different for me because the economic relationship between men and women has changed so dramatically, which is a huge liberation, I think. I was able to be a stay at home dad for a few years in a way that he would never have been able to do. So it's a different world now. But that basic idea that, okay, you have this purpose in life now, which is I have to take care of you. It just changes you. And I had that directly from my dad.

Yeah, and just seeing that example, okay, what does a man do every day? He gets up, he takes care of himself, he clothes himself, and he moves forward in the world in some process. Yeah. No, I think that that's- It took him months to find a job, and I've never been prouder of him, and I really realized that in retrospect.

Oh, wow.

And he passed away now? No.

Oh, good. My parents are in their 80s now. They live in Wales. I'm half Welsh.

Oh, you are? Yeah. Is that the bad one? Or what's the bad one?

Bad in what way?

Yeah, I don't know. That's a good point.

I think you'd have to specify.

One of them. Yeah, I got to look it up more.

Some people would say that the Welsh are bad, but I'm not going to say that.

Okay, yeah.

The Scottish, the Irish?

The Scottish is the easy one. Yeah, everybody's like, The Scottish are over there eating their own teeth. We can agree on that. But it's also... Yeah, okay. No, I love the UK because everybody just rips on the other group, rips on the other part of it. It's the best.

That's true of almost everywhere. It's like everything. It's like college football, it's like states.

But you're nowhere stronger than in the UK.

No, it goes deeper. You go on stage Yeah.

You go on stage in Ireland, you're like, Fuck England. And they will cheer for the-Oh, that's right.

They cheer for the other side, right? In rugby or soccer or something, everybody will. If England's playing Germany, the Welsh will support Germans. We have a history with the Germans, but it's like, even then, it's basically anybody but England.

Oh, so the English and the Welsh are against each other, even?

Oh, crike.

Oh, yes.

I didn't know that. Not quite as much as the Scots, probably. Yeah, for sure. Also, of course, they have deep history. It is the United States. It is four nations. So there is always going to be that difference.

Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. It always just seems so much fun over there, it's how passionate they are about it.

That's great. It's a tribalism can be good or bad. But the issue of... I know you're interested in fatherhood.

Yeah, for sure. I was going to talk... Just so I can relate my own. My dad was older when I was born. My dad was Andy when I was born, so he was an older guy. So I think I had this almost fear all the time that my dad was going to be hurt or die, maybe. Because it was always just scary. He would drive and he would ask us where we were going or if we could turn. And I was just a kid. I'd be standing on the passenger seat and we're standing up and getting up and looking at the lights, and I'd be like, It's good. It's green or bad or something. I remember one time I got it wrong and he just drove right out.

You were literally having to be his eyes while he was driving?

Yeah, I was helping out because sometimes he would park too close under the lights or whatever. He'd wait at an intersection in the middle of the intersection. He was like 80 something at that point. It was just bizarre. I think it was a very bizarre, probably fatherhood connection. Then my parents got divorced. Then at that point, you start And then my dad didn't live with us. And so my mom didn't want him to live with us. And so then you're in this... You don't even realize it as a kid, you're just a kid, but you're in this starvation space for where do you get, probably role models, and who do you look to? And I had my brother around for a couple of years, and then I was a huge wrestling fan. I really idolized a lot of those guys.

Did you do it?

Were you a wrestler? No, I got into steroids steroids, but I never did the wrestling part.

You did the steroid bit, but never.

Yeah. So I did, yes, I guess. But I remember collecting all the figurines and we would watch it. I had a neighbor, and his dad was dialed in, and so that was helpful.

What did he do? He was almost like a dad to you as well? Because you can share it around. I think that's part of the point.

Oh, for sure. I think you can get your father little pieces from different men. I believe that. You had a basketball coach that showed me care and affection and included me in things that his family was doing. Then I ended up moving out and living with a different family when I was 14, and that family had a stable father in the home, and so that helped a lot. But not trying to make it about me. I'm just trying to put both of our stories out there.

I think it's important. Just so we can see. One of the things my dad also did, he was a coach. He coached rugby and stuff. I think, particularly in the US, I've become really interested in the role of coaches. So my basic view is that coaches, especially for boys, we're actually seeing like sports is going down for boys in the US now. Boys are less likely to play sports than in the past. Is that true?

Bring it up.

It's going up. Yeah. The The Lisbon Institute has a really good project called Project Play, where they actually track the data. It's going up for girls and down for boys. Now, it's always been higher for boys, but sports participation is going down for boys. One reason for that is coaches. You need coaches to do that. We can maybe get into male teachers, because actually, one of the things that male teachers do, and my son has just become a teacher. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, he's teaching fifth grade in Baltimore. Within a day of starting, someone heard his accent because he's still got a British accent, heard his accent. He's a soccer coach now, and he actually is a good soccer player. But the point is, he's immediately a coach, right? And I think that coaches are basically mental health professionals in disguise. I think they're doing a lot of the work that you'd otherwise do in terms of mental health. You can see there'll be a line from the Aspen. Okay, here we go.

Here it says, Oh, we have fewer boys are playing sports. In 2013, half of boys aged six to 17 participated regularly in sports. According to SFIA data, only 41% of boys did in 2023. Girls aged 6 to 12 had 34%, and 13 to 17 aged girls were 38 played at higher levels in 2023 than in any recent years. Girls is going up, like you said, boys is going down. Correct. Some of that could be attributed to also a lot more boys are like, they choose to become gamers and that thing, but more sedentary things.

It could be, which is not necessarily a good thing. Ideally, you'd want to do a bit of both. But then the question is, why are boys playing less sport than in the past? And what is this coaching thing? And you can't get coaches. I'd love to see something like a Coach for America program. There's this Teach for America program, which gets people into teaching. Because I think there's a lot of men who are struggling to know how to connect with their community or what they can do. For sure. Some of the older institutions, maybe they used to do that through church or the scouts or whatever, have maybe declined. They have declined. And so if there was a way to plug those men into a coaching role, I think that's important because when you... It's huge. I mean, maybe this is maybe your experience, but I think if you look at the image of a coach sitting on a bench Like with a student, a boy or a young man sitting next to him, and he's like, How are you doing? How are things at home? How are things with your mom? Et cetera. That's counseling.

That's It's therapy, but you're just not calling it that. And the other thing is, critically, you're doing it shoulder to shoulder. Do you know this thing about the difference in communication style between men and women and boys and girls? Men go shoulder to shoulder, women go face to face. It's interesting how we're set up here. Once you've seen this, you can't unsee it.

Oh, that's interesting. Because guys don't usually look at each other when they're sharing information that much.

No, because actually, that's a little bit of a threatening stance for men. If men go face to face, that might indicate some aggression or something. It's a bit like you're intimidating each other a little bit. There's a role for that, probably.

When you talk to someone, you rarely stand and look directly. It's always a little bit of an act.

Not if you're male. So We learned this a hard way. Even before I had any of the data, and God, I wish I'd had this data when we were raising our kids. But my wife would... Our kids would come home from school, all boys, and the two that were in high school and middle school at the time, they'd come home and they'd sit across the breakfast bar from her, and she'd be feeding them stuff. She'd be feeding them protein, have some protein, and then she'd stare at them like this and be like, How was your day? How was your day? And they'd be like, Fine. They'd look down, Fine. Did you learn anything? I don't know. Nothing, just nothing. And then later on, we'd be driving with them somewhere or watching a game or video game or just something like that, shoulder to shoulder. And they would say, this weird thing happened today, dad or mom. It's a weird... This girl said this thing at school today. Interesting. What we now know is that that's very, very common, that actually the communication style that men are most comfortable with is less face to face and it's more shoulder to shoulder.

Now, Think about this. Fishing, road trips, watching sports, sitting on the bench, shoulder to shoulder. It's the only explanation I have for the existence of golf. What is golf about? Do you play golf? Mm-mm.

Okay, good. I'm willing to play it, but I can't even calm down right now.

But it's like, again, men have to be doing something else, and they have to be doing it like just... If you go to a party now, you will not be We're able to unsee this. Watch how the men stand in relation to each other. There are people who've done whole PhDs on measuring the angle. We always stand a little bit catty-corner, a little bit of an angle, because to go face-to-face is threatening. Now, women, on the other hand, very comfortable face-to-face. Walking to a coffee shop and count up how many people are sitting opposite each other, staring each other in the face, and then see what the gender is of them. Much more like to be woman. Now, it's not like one is good or bad, but what you don't want is a mental health profession, like psychology or whatever it is based on the presumption that we're all supposed to sit like this. And so a lot of male therapists now, they're taking their male patients out for a walk.

That's the thing to do.

Walk and talk. That's the best. Walk with them. Don't sit and stare at them.

I've been saying that for years.

As a man, it's like we don't It's not it.

Yeah. Mike's girlfriend is a therapist now, and she and I, whenever we really need to discuss stuff, we go on a walk because you're in motion already. There's a part of you that feels like it's moving forward, even if you're sharing something that's troubling, because sometimes you You're sitting in a sedentary... You're just sitting there in a room somewhere. It's like, oh, you leave. You haven't really gone anywhere. Nothing's happened. But on a walk, you're making progress no matter what, even by just staying in motion.

Yes, same as a road trip. But they've now got this physiological element to it, too, which is that just how you're relating to each other physically, especially for men, it's just very important that we are-I'm going to try that next time with my therapist in a room.

It's like, yeah, maybe it's easier if I'm just able to share and have somebody there, right? I remember one time I was talking to my brother, and I didn't know that this had been important in my life, but he said, Hey, man, I can just... I was having a tough day, man. I pulled over. I was falling apart a little bit. And he's like, Hey, man, I can just sit here on the phone with you. We don't have to say anything, right? And I'd never... He's like, I have some time, right? I have an extra 10 minutes. I can just sit here with you. We don't have to say anything, and I can just be here with you. And, man, I just... I mean, it was like a dam inside of me broke. It was like, literally, there was tears coming out of my toe nails. It was just like, you didn't realize all the time you needed someone just to be there. I didn't need to hear them say anything. I didn't need to hear how they thought I felt. I didn't need to hear a response to Anything, no jug, but nothing. I just needed somebody there.

I remember my hands vibrating. It shook me so much.

You're very lucky. That idea of being with somebody, not necessarily for them. I think sometimes we think we've got to be for them. We've got to be telling them what to do. We've got to be advising them. We've got to be advocating. Somehow we've got to be doing something. Sometimes it's just being with. For them to know that you're with I'm with you. That's an incredibly powerful statement. One of the things that has really motivated my work around Boys and Men, which I didn't ever expect really to be doing, was just this sense that I had that so many boys and men now don't have that feeling that we are with you, that we have your back. We've noticed that you're struggling, and we're with you. Instead, there's sometimes has been a sense a lot of men have felt, which is of being neglected or sometimes even blamed for their own problems.

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I think there are these real problems. I know you talk to Scott Galloway about some of these issues. Scott has been amazing on this, but the suicide rate among men under the age of 30 has risen by 40 % since 2010. Just since 2010, by 40 %.

Is that true? Bring that up.

Yeah. The American One Institute for Boys and Men did a suicide trends analysis. And if you go down, you can then see the shift in... So up until 2010, it was much more older men who were... There you go. You got it. So if you go down, there's a...

Let me see. If male suicide rates had been the same as women's from 1999 to 2023, we would have lost 546,000 fewer men. So 2010, or since 2010, suicide rates have risen by 30 %.

For 25 to 34. But we've updated that since. And for under 20s, it's 40 %. So it was really interesting about the suicide.

And where do you get this information from?

From CDC, from the Center of These controls. This is official. We lose 40,000 men a year to suicide. And since 2010, it's all shifted to being younger men. Up until 2010, the rise was middle-aged of men, really. And that was about deaths of despair. You can see it's partly about the economy. But since 2010, the rise has been among younger men. And so that's a very different thing. That's not about the recession. That's something different going on. I think that's more cultural. I think it's more just a lot of these young men feeling lost, feeling unseen.

Yeah. What am I a part of? Yeah, because you have to have purpose, right? And I think you have to have purpose. We've talked a lot about that on this podcast. I learned a lot I thought about it. But, yeah, we have to have something to feel a part of. Man, I remember there was a guy I went skydiving with, and he'd listen to this podcast when it first started out. And he and I connected, and we connected on some emotional levels, talking about life and stuff. And then there were a couple of times he'd messaged me, and I didn't get back to him over like, it was six months or something. I mean, life. You're busy. Life, yeah. And then he took his own life. Not I had... Nothing I probably could have done. But just like, man, it's just like, oh, I just like, sometimes all that stuff haunt you.

But you don't know it's coming. And one of the things that stop me in my tracks. You know how sometimes, for a living, I'm reading research reports and looking at data and stuff. But I've also been racing three boys. But even in the research, sometimes you get a finding that just stops you and it affects you emotionally. There's one study that looked at men who'd taken their own lives and then looked at the words they'd used to describe themselves before they'd taken their lives. The two most commonly used words that men were using about themselves before they took their own lives was, I'm useless and I'm worthless. That sense of worthless, of genuinely feeling like maybe my family, my community will be better off without me than with me is what leads to that tragic outcome. And of course, that's just the tip of the... I think that's the tip of the iceberg. If you then look at drugs, you look at substance abuse, you look at what's happening in the employment market, I think that sense that a lot of men have is that there isn't really a script anymore to follow, to manhood, to mature masculinity.

And I think that in one way, that's for a good reason. But the way I think about this is if you think It was about the script that my dad had about being a breadwinner and a provider.

Yeah, so I was going to say, let's look at some previous scripts so we can examine those. Yeah, it was a script.

My parents are a good example. Born in the '40s, had the kids in the '96s. And then it was like my mom knew that she was mostly going to be the homemaker and the mom. She worked as well. She was a nurse. But my dad knew that he was going to be the breadwinner, the provider. There was not a discussion about that. There was no question about that. So they had pretty clear roles. Now, the problem with that, of course, was that the roles depended on the woman, in this case, my mom being economically dependent on my dad. That's the problem. And that's the problem that the women's movement successfully, to a large extent, set out to solve. But my dad was also quite emotionally dependent on my mom and vice versa. But I do think it's a two-way street that was missing from the analysis. Anyway, we tore up these old scripts and we said to women, You don't to be a housewife and mother anymore, or at least that's not your only option. You can be whatever you want to be. You go, girl. Be president, be an astronaut, be whatever, which is amazing.

Totally amazing. That message of empowerment we sent to women So we tore up the old female script, provided a new one about empowerment and independence and you go, girl. We tore up the old male script, which is you're going to be the provider and the protector.

We don't really have a new one.

We didn't replace it. And so we're all improvising now. So basically, we've gone from having some script to improvisation. And that's incredibly difficult to do. And so it's hard because the good news here is what's happened to women. Nobody wants to roll back the economic gains of women. But I think it's incredibly irresponsible and naive of us to think that that doesn't have consequences for how we think about the role of men. We've got to be able to think both of those thoughts at once. It's good that women are gaining ground. It is bad that men feel We are lost and purposeless, and we have got to solve that problem as well.

Yeah. No, I think that's really cool information. It's good to look at. It's good to like... And it makes perfect sense, right? And it's like you want to have a reason And sometimes I think women, yes, they didn't have the access to money, and in a capitalistic society, money is power. But also, I think there was a missing respect there. I think if it had been totally respected, the sacrifices that they made and the just intrinsic value of who they are as mothers and as caretakers and as bridges of empathy and affection, And as homeowners, no matter where they are, whether they're in a home or whether they're in a conversation, just being able to have that ability to create peace. I think if that had been more respected, then maybe they never would have felt as much of a movement or as much of a desire to have so much of a movement- Because they had the power.

Right.

And the money is the power.

And the women's movement had a huge fight about that because there were some people in the women's movement saying, no, it's called the Wages for Housework Movement, which was basically what we need to do is pay women to do the traditional women's role.

That's a cool idea.

And that lost out. That was a real idea?

Yeah. Bring that up, the Wages for Housework Movement?

Yeah. There's a big split in the women's movement between the ones who are saying we need to value care and value care work, like Wages for Housework. And then there's another movement, which is like, actually, you've got to be in the 1970s.

I never knew about this. The Wages for Housework campaign was a 1970s international movement that demanded governments recognized the value of unpaid domestic labor, primarily performed by women. Wow. The founders were Sylvia Federici, Selma James, Marielsa Díacosta, and Bridget Galtier. Their goals were to change the dependency of domestic workers, reverse power relations, and redistribute wealth. Yeah. Dude, that's fascinating.

That's another way we could have gone, in theory, at least, right? Right.

And I'm not saying that women didn't deserve to have all the jobs and whatever they wanted to do. I'm just saying if there had been a different level of respect, and this makes perfect sense, and some financial equality, maybe they wouldn't have wanted that. I have no idea. I'm just thinking.

No. Well, this is a really interesting question because I now think we're at a point where a lot of men and women are feeling like this isn't quite working. We're trying to raise kids. We're trying to form families. We want to raise our own kids.

Right. Both parents are so stressed out that they can't even have a relationship anymore. Right.

We want to stay together and be married. We want to raise our own kids by and large, and we don't want to die of stress. So one of the ways to think about this is you had this old family system, which was breadwinner father, homemaker mother, and And it was unfair in many ways, but it was also pretty stable and very clear what everyone's role is, and it was pretty good for kids because of that stability when it worked. We've replaced that with a different model now where we don't want that economic inequality. So we're going to both men and women are going to work. That can create all kinds of stress. And maybe that relationship is hard to sustain, which means it might end up separating, which is not good for kids.

And the rules aren't super clear. You don't know who's going to be doing what. You don't know who's getting certain things done. You don't know.

The division of labor is not clear anymore. And a division of labor, in other words, being clear, you do this, I do this.

It's like an organized business, really.

Yeah. I mean, it's like everybody knows that it makes more sense. You're in charge of X, I'm in charge of Y. So you get really good at X and I get really good at white. The interesting path we took instead was like, okay, women need to get into the labor market and have labor market power. I think that was almost certainly the... I mean, that's the right... I don't imagine a world where the Wages for Housework movement, huge government subsidies to people who are staying at home, was ever likely. There's all kinds of problems with that idea. But it's an interesting idea, but thought behind it, which is, are we doing enough to support the people who want to raise their own kids. The whole point of the women's movement wasn't to turn women into their fathers. It was to give everybody more choice. We haven't achieved that yet because we haven't done the rest of it, which is to change the way the workplace works, to give more support to families. I know you had JD Vance on, And J. D. Vance has supported a child tax credit, which is seen as a left-wing idea to give more money to people who've got kids in the house.

That's not wages for housework, but it's in the direction of actually valuing care through government subsidy. But that has not been an idea that's been popular for a pretty long time. Really? Well, since the '70s, I would agree.

Yeah, you're saying that. Yeah, that's interesting. Right. So it's a similar idea. It's not the same. Yeah.

And it wouldn't be framed as wages for housework anymore. And it certainly wouldn't be aimed just at women anymore. It would be for families, et cetera. But the idea that another way to go is to actually provide financial support, like most European countries do, to parents who are at home and not just to parents who are in the workplace. That's an interesting discussion right now. And I think as long as it doesn't become a call to go back, we're going to help women stay in the home. Instead, it should be to help parents figure out for themselves. And I'm a huge believer that actually fathers are doing so much more than they were in the past. Fathers are doing so much more in the home, so much more childcare. Dads are saying they want to do more. Interestingly, now, men are more likely to say that having children is important to them than women are. Men are more likely to say that getting married is important to them than women are. And so that's a really interesting moment in history where if you've got this stereotype that it's like women who are obsessed with getting married and having kids, not anymore.

It's now men who are saying that's a higher priority for them.

It's almost like men are coming to bridge the gap there of making... Because there always needs to be some... One of the parties has to be, until we can get both of the parties to be aligned, has to be the one that wants to bring it back to let's have a family and move because I think you have to do it. It's like, it's how we're built.

Yeah, exactly. How am I going to get that purpose that you talk about? I think I've heard you say that you want to have kids at some point.

Oh, yeah. I would like to have some kids, man. I started this campaign. It's called 2020 That means like, it's 2025, but it's like this is the year I get a wife.

Oh, I see. So that is-I thought you meant you were going to get 25 wives.

Oh, no. Now look, I'd be willing to have more than one wife, but-We would need a change in the law for that, Yeah. Hey, I could be a dual citizen.

You'd have to be a dual citizen with, I think, Afghanistan. Okay. Maybe Iran.

I'm willing. I could do it, man.

You'd also have to convert to Islam.

Oh, really?

Well, how long does-Christian doesn't It doesn't look kindly on multiple lines.

Can you convert to Islam online or not? Bring that up.

I'm not the right person to ask that.

How to convert to Islam? Oh, good. And there's a 1-800 number? There is. Scroll up. Scroll down. Oh, it's an 866 number. Damn, that's great.

Does that mean you have to pay for it?

I'm sure they hit you with something, man. Converting it as long as it's very easy process and can be done online in Okay. Now that makes it sound very suspect, the fact that it has to be done.

We could just tell someone, right? Yeah, no one can know.

It sounds like somebody is recruiting.

I think a better route for you if I can offer some advice. It is to just have one wife. I think that that stood the test of time as a way of doing things. Actually, look, I should be very recent time. I think most human societies have been polygamous, have actually had. Really? Yeah, it's like 95 % of known human societies have been polygamous and almost always, I'll get the word wrong, it's polygamous, I think, which means men are allowed to have multiple wives, but not the other way around. Wow. It's very rare to find it the other way around, which is one of the reasons why... This is a fact that blew my mind. I'm going to try on you. See what you think. We have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. Okay, twice as many.

Ancesters. An ancestor means what?

Across human history.

An ancestor means somebody that existed? So twice as many females existed as men?

There are twice as many women in human history as there are men. Twice as many.

Yes. Modern humans have approximately twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. This is due to a number of factors.

I love the fact that you're checking everything I say. This makes me feel much more confident about saying it because then you're going to check Yeah, good.

Because we're trying to do a little bit better job. That's one of my goals this year is just to have a better... Because sometimes I just assume everything is true, right? And a lot of this stuff is just helpful information. But I don't understand, though. Right. So how can you have twice as many females? You're just saying that two-thirds of the people that have ever existed have been a female? Yeah. Wow. But I guess it makes sense because there's Mother Earth, right? So obviously, she's going to want more babes around out on her. And then you're going to have... There's going to be... And females are the producers. They have the womb, and they're the makers. They're the chefs. So you need more your... Life is about creation. So I think it makes sense that you're going to have more women around, probably. Does that make any sense, you think?

No. Okay.

I just think women are the who keep things together. Sure. I think you're going to need more of that, probably, to keep the world functioning.

Okay. Actually, the idea- Do you know why they have more, though?

Yeah. Oh, sorry. Jesus.

No, I like- I thought you were guessing. I don't hate your idea. It's certain, like the idea that Mother Earth wants more mothers around? I think it's a beautiful idea.

Yeah, I think it checks out to me.

Why aren't we googling this?

That's a good question. Who wants a bunch of dudes I'm waitering around anyway? Someone's going to call the police.

Every time I say something, you have this guy googling it, whereas you say stuff. Google his stuff.

There you go right there. Look at that lady right there.

Are there more women because Mother Earth likes women better?

Oh, for sure. She's obviously going to have a probably definitely... I don't know. Maybe Mother Earth is very jealous and she doesn't want women around.

Could be the other way around. Yeah. Could be like, wouldn't Mother Earth want lots of men?

That's what I would think, too. If she was straight. But men are Men are just loiting around. They're jerking off in the parking lot or whatever. You don't want that. I don't think that's it. That's not what you want. You want some babes around, I think.

Can I give you an alternative theory as to why? Which is that because societies have been polygamous, you don't need that many men in order to have a lot of children.

It's like the NBA. It's like NBA players thing. What do you mean? Like a lot of those guys have. Who has the most kids in the NBA? Bring that up.

Are they NBA players well known for having lots of children?

I think they're promiscuous type of... So it's like Calvin Murphy, there we go, 14 children. I'm just saying, yeah, these guys can Definitely-Well, you see on Tinder as well, you see on these apps, it's like a winner takes all type thing.

That's what Scott Galloway was saying, that like the top 1% of men. But what's interesting about that is that's basically human I actually showed that Tinder data to an evolutionary psychologist, someone who studies the whole history of humanity. And he's like, Yeah, that just looks like human history to me, which is high status men mating with multiple women, and therefore we are reproduced. But 50 % of men across human history didn't have kids at all. They didn't reproduce. Now, what that meant was there's all kinds of implications for that. One is, first of all, I'm reading this book by Neil Stevenson now. It's called Seven Eves. And we basically have to send out a few people to survive. And there's this passing comment because the Earth is going to be destroyed. The Seven Eves? Seven Eves, yeah. There's this passing comment there, which is like, most of the colonists will have to be female. And the reason for that is the ones we're talking about, which is you need a lot of womes to keep the human race going, but you don't need as many men. There's this guy, actually, I can quote him directly.

This guy, Roy Baumeister, who says, We have a penile surplus, which is a brutal way of putting it, but it's like, we just don't need that many men. Now, one consequence of that is, and this is going to get me back to your sky diving. I'm going to loop this. If I'm successful here- I like this. If I'm successful, I'm going to loop this back to sky diving.

I have zero % chance of looping things.

Okay, let me try.

I believe in you. So okay.

Yeah. So 50 % of men have not reproduced in human history. So half the men have kids, half of them don't have kids. And it's the lowest status men who are not going to have kids, right? Because the highest status men have multiple wives. They're actually, if you like, they're over consuming.

And they can afford to do it. Correct.

And so if you're a low status man, there's a good chance that you're just not going to reproduce at all. You're going to be an evolutionary dead end. Your DNA is not going to go anywhere. And under those circumstances, you will risk almost anything to raise your status. Go to war, go exploring, turn to crime, do anything to try and get yourself up that hierarchy so you have a chance of reproducing. If you stay down there, you ain't going to have kids. You're cooked. And so you got to get there. You take risks. You risk your life because actually, if you die-Who cares? Who cares? You only got a 50/50 chance of having a kid anyway. You don't have any kids already. If you're down there, it's not 50/50. It's maybe like, you're almost certainly not going to have a kid. You take crazy risks to raise up the hierarchy. One consequence of that is men, on average, are more risk-taking than women, even today, which is why they go skydiving. What do you think about skydiving? Men are also twice as likely to drown.

They're twice as likely to drown? Yeah.

There's all kinds of ways. Risky behavior, both good and bad, is higher among men. Good could be like being entrepreneurial, whatever.

I don't know any women that have drowned, and I know some men that have drowned. Right.

And so skydiving. You know what? I'm going to say something, and I don't know if this is true, so you're going to have to get your fact checker in the sky to check, but I bet you more men skydive. But I know for sure that smoke jumpers are almost entirely men. Do you know what a smoke jumper is?

I don't think so. It's not a Native American thing, is it?

No, you're from the south, right? Where are you from?

Yeah, I'm from Louisiana.

Yeah, okay. You'd know if you were from out West, Great. What does it say about men and women?

Well, the number of men and women who try tandem skydiving is roughly equal. The sport of skydiving is predominantly male. Professional skydivers, only about 14 % of professional skydivers in the United States are women. Some reasons for the disparity, women may be more risk averse than men, just like you're saying.

That's number one.

And women may be perceived as less interested in taking risks.

Just from an evolutionary perspective, or if you're a woman, you are highly incentivized to protect your own body, because you're probably... This is just an evolutionary term.

Yeah, you're the one who's got the future in you.

Yes, and you're going to have a kid, probably. Most women have reproduced. You'll quite like to have a kid. Whereas if you're a guy, actually, if you've only historically had a 50/50 chance, and you got to get more status, and your body is less, quotes, valuable.

Who cares if your nuts land out in the desert or whatever because your shoe didn't open?

Or you throw yourself out of a plane. So these smoke jumpers.

Smoke jumpers are highly trained firefighters who parachute from airplanes in a remote areas to fight wildfires. Wow. It's almost like a severe barbecue, like one of those TV shows or whatever.

Smoke jumpers are really interesting because these are people who have chosen for a job.

Okay.

That they will go up in an airplane, jump out of the airplane, even when there's nothing wrong with the airplane, which is what you do, apparently, jump out of the airplane. But the difference is they jump out of the airplane into a blazing inferno in the middle of nowhere and stay there for days on end, fighting that fire. That's an interesting job choice, and it's almost all men. Now, there are some women, and of course, women should be encouraged to do that job, and that's great if they want to do that job. But I'm just going to go... I said this to a female friend of mine. I said, this profession, I explained to her what it was, and she said, you can keep that one. There is no big feminist movement to get more women into smoke jumping.

Yeah, and smoke is so bad for you anyway.

I guess the point here is there are ways in which on average, men and women are different. And one of them is that men have this different appetite for risk. Do we think that that's good or bad? Is the wrong question. It's both good and bad. It depends how it's expressed. Because there are times when you want people to be willing to take risks, to put themselves on the line, or to try a new venture or something like that. There are times when it's a really bad idea to try a new drug when it's not a good idea or to jump too high off a bridge or whatever it is. There's ways in which those differences between men and women can either become good or bad, but we don't get anywhere by denying that they exist. What we do is we say there are these differences. How do we channel them in productive ways. And so if young men, for example, are a bit more risk-taking, and they're a lot more risk-taking when they're young, if they're a bit more potential for physical aggression, which is absolutely clear, et cetera, if they're a bit more driven by sex, for example, which is also absolutely true, and we see that playing out in all kinds of ways around pornography, et cetera.

It doesn't do any good to just say that's not true. That those things aren't... They're all socialized. Actually, instead, what we're going to say is they are true. So what do we do about that as a culture and as a society? How do we take those differences responsibly and not fall into the trap of saying one is good or one is bad. We used to think that somehow the male attributes, to call them that, were better. That's a patriarchy. And the female ones, maybe more caring, more nurturing, et cetera. As you said a minute ago, we valued them less. We don't want a society like that. But we also don't want a society where the more male leaning attributes are seen as intrinsically bad. It's one of the reasons why I hate the term toxic masculinity, by the way.

Well, also, if there's no toxic femininity either, which is interesting. It's like because you got to have one and the other no matter what. I feel like getting your sweat on might seem like hard work, but with Symmetry Sauna, it's a work of art. Premium custom saunas for your home or business, plus a series of sleek, prebuilt saunas. I just got myself a Cimetry Sauna, and I'm sweating out bad decisions. Like the time I tried to just fill my own chipped tooth in. Why sauna? Well, it relieves sore joints and muscles, improves skin, boosts heart health, and melts stress like hot butter. I'm finally sleeping like a baby, which is rare since I'm usually up at 3: 00 AM wondering if penguins have knees. Pro athletes, fitness buffs, big folks getting small, small folks getting big. Everybody's hot boxing. Cymetry saunas, Can help. Designed in the USA, made with Aspen wood from ancient Estonian forests. Yep, fancy trees. Cimetry Sauna, the perfect balance of form and function. Learn more about how to get your own premium home sauna from Cemetery Sauna at cimetriesauna. Com/thheo. Just to circle back to where we were. There's a lot of men that are suffering, right?

That's been improved. There's a lot more of suicide. There's uncertainty is what it means to be a man. Masculinity, this masculinity with this new femininity being defined now. The new masculinity is undefined.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

And a lot of men are looking for their place. What do you feel like is causing that these days? Because it's not women causing it. It's not this equality of women.

No, it's not. And I think that's a really important thing to say because that sometimes is what feels like might be the case and what some people are saying, including online, which is what they do is they take two facts, which is women have risen significantly economically in terms of education now, massively overtaken men, et cetera. Men are struggling and suffering.

There's a cul-de-sac That's the thing of sorts.

Yeah. Maybe that's because of that. Maybe the struggles of men are the result of the rise of women. That's completely untrue. They're for different reasons. The economy has changed. A lot of the jobs that men used to be able to do, especially without maybe that much education in manufacturing and steelworks and mining and stuff.

They've largely gone. Now, are they gone for good or they've just gone away from America?

They've gone away from America.

They've gone away from America.

Okay. There's no serious prospect of those male jobs that required strong physical labor.

Bruce Springsteen type stuff.

It's not coming back. We can be nostalgic for them, by and large. I mean, I'm not saying there's none of that. But that's a huge shock. It's a massive change in the workplace. It's just those jobs that men used to be able to do that their dad maybe did. They're just not there.

Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of the commercials when I was a kid. It was like, I was born in a small town. You know what I'm saying? It was that commercial So it was like somebody made something. And I remember my grandfather worked at the plant in his town, and they made elevators and stuff. They made parts for elevators, and it was a small town. But he worked there, and my grandma would take him lunch over there during lunchtime, and they had a lunch whistle And there was just these little things. And whenever we drove past there, we were like, grandpa works there. So it added purpose to everybody's existence. Yeah.

And there was a real structure to it. I mean, just think about my own family. I took my three sons to North Wales, to a town called Blyna Fustiniog in North Wales.

Blyna Fustiniog is a disease as well, I think. In a few minutes, it'll be a new drug available in America.

This will fool your fact checker. They will not be able to even spell Blyna Fustiniog. But you was the biggest producer of slate for a long time. And generations of my family have worked in that slate mine. Oh, really? And we went there and we found their great, great, great, great, great grandfather's grave. No way. And went down to the mine and spent some time there. It had a big effect on them. And it's like, what did you do? You did what your dad did, go down the mine. What your grandad did, go down the mine. Go down the mine, go down the mine. And even when I was growing up, and I grew up in Peterborough, an industrial town, my mom was a part-time industrial nurse for a while. And the hooter for the ends of the shift, we could hear it across the town. And so we knew when she was coming home because we would hear the factory hooter. Horn. Horn, yeah. Sounder. Alarm. Thank you.

Wow. Yeah, so it's almost like as And the men were out of the minds now. A little bit.

We had that-Not everybody.

Some people are still in there.

It was such a weird experience. We went down to the bottom of the slate mine, and there are these little huts in the bottom of the mine, and they would go in there for like 30 minutes at lunchtime, and they would sing. This is in Welsh, right? So they'd sing. They'd sing, and they'd eat, and they'd talk, maybe do a bit of politics, right? And then they'd go back up and start coming out the mine. Very dangerous, incredibly well paid for the time, but very dangerous work. And there was something about, I went to those huts and I sat in there with my boys, and we're sitting there and thinking about seven generations of our family being down there. Actually, this is going to sound a bit weird, but almost being a little bit envious of what it was like for those men to go down there and be in that little hut. And then, of course, you catch yourself and you think you're an idiot. It was dangerous work. It was hard. What are you talking about? If you put me in there now, I probably wouldn't do great. But I think what it was catching for me, and with my boys especially, was this sense of male solidarity.

Just a sense, that visceral sense of it did structure lives, male lives in particular. In that town, when the men went down into the mines, all the wives would come out, and the children, and stand silently. It was bad luck for there to be any noise. So they stood silently while the men went down into the mine and hoped that they would come back. So There's something very beautiful and nostalgic about that, and I get that nostalgia.

Yeah, it was a tradition. It was a ritual.

Ritual, tradition, purpose, space, clear script. What are you going to do? How about you do what your great, great, great, and your grandfather did and your great grandfather and your grandfather? How about just doing that? And I don't think we couldn't, even if we wanted to, reconstruct that world. But I do think we should be honest about the fact that the collapse of that structure and those scripts has really left a lot of men incredibly uncertain about, am I going to be needed by my family? What am I going to do? What's my job going to be? So we've had this massive economic change. And then alongside it, we've had huge social change, which has been the economic rise of women. And so it's no longer the case that women are now looking for a man. Gloria Steinem is a very famous feminist, still alive from the 1970s. I actually had a really cool meeting with her.

Really? Totally cool lady or not?

Yes, totally cool. I got to meet that lady. She's amazing. And she said, famously, she said, The point of the women's movement is to make marriage a choice for women, not a necessity. Right? Because women needed to get married before.

It was your only way who was going to pay for dinner. To eat.

Not a fancy restaurant. And so the whole point is to make it a choice so that women have enough economic power to choose marriage rather than being forced into it. This is a weird coda, but she actually just got married herself. I think she's in her 90s now. She's so cool. But she got married, partly because same-sex marriage is legal now and because she said, We've made enough progress, that marriage... She used to describe marriage as this patriarchal citadel, et cetera. Here's the weird thing. She got married to Christian Bale's father, which I just find a bit random.

And he's British, isn't he? Interesting.

No, is he?

I don't know. I don't know either. David Bale, right there. In 2066, the long single Steina married for the first time in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma.

That was a while ago. It was in 2000, right?

Her husband, entrepreneur and activist, David Bale, sadly died of lymphoma four years later. That's right. Wow.

Yeah. But even in the end, even Gloria Steinem felt like it was okay to get married. We've made enough progress. Right. To that actually, the women, marriage was no longer this trap for women economically. But it was a choice. It was a choice. But of course, what that means is when it's a choice, there's a lot of women that might be like, I choose not to marry you. I might or might not have your kids, but we're now in this world where there's a lot more freedom of choice. And of course, that is a great and wonderful thing. But it's also created a huge amount of uncertainty, especially among men. I think a lot of men feel now that they've been told a bunch of things that they know they shouldn't be. Shouldn't be predator, shouldn't...

Don't do this. You can't peep in Tom. You can't keep in time.

You can't- And quite right, too. But there's no... I sometimes think that we had a long list of don'ts for men. But not very many dos. Where's the list of to-dos for men now?

For sure. And it used to be that, yeah, almost every man was You weren't guaranteed a wife, but everybody's going to need to pair up because the way that the script was put together, you needed each other because you needed someone to be in the home. You needed someone to be the breadwinner. The script was there. You had to partner up. So figure it out and let's move on. Let's move forward in the world.

Exactly. And what I fear now is that there are some more reactionary forces, voices saying the way to actually for men to find purpose is to go back. Because it's very recently that there was a world where men felt purpose, which was the world we just escaped from, where women were economically dependent on men. I could totally understand why this is happening, where people are saying, well, we used to know what our role was when women were economically reliant on us. Well, first of all, we ain't going back. There's no switch you could turn that even if you wanted to, and we don't want to. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing more to help men move forward and actually having a bit of empathy for the fact that this is a difficult moment, a difficult transition for men. Rather than pointing fingers at them, we should maybe offering them the occasional helping hand. And I think that lack of empathy and understanding and awareness of the genuine suffering of many of our men has created a huge vacuum in our culture and in our society, and we need to fill it fast. Otherwise, we're going to lose more and more of our men.

And we'll be right back. Wow. Very true. So one thing you have to start to look at is then where do men start or where do men continue to find these building blocks, right? To create the worth inside of themselves. For me, one thing has been through other men, right? And even You're saying shoulder to shoulder. Experiences that I've had that have been the best. Even when I used to go to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and take classes there, it was really amazing because you're in this physical space, but also there's so much mutual respect in there. It's not people trying to beat each other up. It's people trying to help each other physically learn how to take care of themselves. But with that, there's so much camaraderie and love and compassion that comes along with having great instructors. And a lot of times, it's just the guy next to you who's your best instructor for the next moment. Recovery meetings. I go to recovery meetings for intimacy and AA. Those meetings for me are really great, especially the intimacy ones, where they call it sex and love addiction and stuff, but it's really just like intimacy disorders or connection disorders.

It's almost just low self-worth. It's all of that. Sometimes you base it off of your relationship with women, or you can look at your relationship with women to see how you're doing on your own.

Are there men and women in those groups, or is it just men? A lot of the ones I go to are just men.

It's not that I don't want women in them. It's just like, I want a space where it's just men. I can be able to share openly if I'm struggling with a certain thing or how I'm feeling, and it just be other men. It just feels… Then you're not trying to slurp on any of the chics that are in there either. You're not trying to flirt or anything.

Which would seem bad, given the nature of the problems that many of the men have. You'll be shocked. It'll be like holding an AA meeting in a bar or something. I understand that.

But you're getting male solidarity from both of those places. That's what you're getting. That's one of the reasons I go. I go out of here other men I go to share. Sometimes they'll say something and my body will just go like that.

It's like your shoulders drop, you breathe.

It's an exhale that I didn't even know I needed to take. It's an exhale that has just been running in the back of my subconscious for sometimes decades, sometimes hours, sometimes years, minutes. But it's something that I needed to hear. I needed to hear everything was okay, and I needed to hear another man's voice say it. It helps.

Yeah, it's interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, you're welcome. But yeah, what spaces are there for men?

It's something beautiful about that, I think. And I get it back to my story about the hut, in the bottom of the slate mine. It's like There's something-Oh, yeah.

There's something nice about it.

It's beautiful. It's quite fragile. I think that male friendships take work. I think we sometimes don't pay enough attention to them. It's actually something like I go on road trips with my best friend, or every year, I get together my male buddies, and we go hiking so that we're shoulder to shoulder and just talk and catch up. And that's... I think one of the damaging trends in recent years has been a suspicion of male spaces. Of like the boys weekend or even some of the institutions. So if you actually go through the institutions now, like the Boy Scouts is not the Boy Scouts anymore. I'm actually a Scout leader. I'm not doing as much now, but I used to run a scout group over in the UK, and I was a scout, but it's co-ed now.

Boy Scouts What is co-ed?

It's scouting for America now.

And what is Girl Scouts? Or they just join forces? No.

Girl Scouts is still Girl Scouts. No.

And we can't go over there?

The Girl Scouts does not allow boys in. But Boy Scouts has become scouting for America.

Ladies, that's not even cool.

But there's a pattern here. You've got the YMCA is now co-ed, right? No one really thinks about the M in YMCA anymore.

That's your point, huh?

Whereas the YWCA, still very focused on women. Boys and Girls Clubs used to be Boys Clubs. I'm thinking there's one other one I'm thinking of. And it's not that there's always bad things to be co-ed. It's not that you also don't want institutions for girls and women. But what we've got now is a situation where we're actually really, really, very often applauding having these spaces for girls and women to have female solidarity, work together, grow together. But we're really suspicious if it's men doing it. I get why, because of our history. But I think that as a result, we've actually deconstructed a lot of these institutions where actually boys could learn from other boys and from men and so on, too. And so I think that turning the Boy Scouts into scouting for America and taking not for it being... I think we'll look back on that and just say, that was a bad decision.

It's emasculating in a way.

It's just like, why can't... I mean, I just think about my own experience. Why can't we meet? I went to a co-ed high school, but actually the fact that I was able to go to scouts and it would be guys there and we could learn from each other. And I, weirdly, I actually think that male spaces are where you can help men to learn some of the not traditionally male attributes, like caring and nurturing and love and expressing that stuff. It's just easier, right? Or a male sports team. You're learning love, you're learning camaraderie, you're learning solidarity, you're learning... Exactly. And I just think that's a bit... And it probably is true for girls, too, that learning some of those skills that maybe go against the stereotype of girls, like learning to be more assertive, maybe or competitive, et cetera. You generally don't have to encourage a bunch of boys to compete with each other. That just tends to be a bit more baked in.

It's in the nature. Yeah. And there should be spaces where it's like, Hey, man, can meet up here tonight. And they used to have more of them. There was more American lead Visions. There was more like VFWs, but a lot of that was military-based type stuff. It was. And since we haven't had that large of a war, I know we have conflicts, and we've had some smaller wars, but I know since we haven't had such a huge conflict, there hasn't been that big band of brothers type of vibe that's brought men together so much. And then also, and I'll go even as far as, say, if you're a white male, there's spaces for black males, Latinos, Middle Eastern clubs. There can be all types. But if you're a white guy, you just are fucking... You're pointed out a lot of times it feels like by the media as a loser as part of the problem, as the creator of the problem. I don't think a lot of that energy is also good in our country, we have white males in our country. You can't make also white males feel like they don't exist. Because also a lot of white people didn't have a lot of, yes, I know there's privilege, but if you grew up with nothing, you didn't fucking feel any privilege sometimes.

In fact, being white and having nothing, I would get looked at personally as, why the fuck don't you have anything? How did you fuck this up so bad? Something really must be wrong with you if you have the color, but your family can't even get shit together enough. Wow, what a loser. I'm not speaking against any other group, but I'm just saying sometimes there's not a rep. You're not allowed to speak up for your own group just because of history, and that doesn't feel super fair sometimes. Does that seem crazy or not?

It feels so. As a new American, I've learned a lot about the history of racism in this country, and particularly for black Americans. I feel very strongly about it.

If I start slavery shit, yeah, gun me down.

But it's so civil rights.

But if I'm just playing fantasy football and trying to take care of a family, let me be somebody.

Again, I think the way I see this is that it's part of a more general problem, which is to be able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, which is it is true that America has this history of racism and that there are still some racial issues that we need to deal with.

Britain started it. Yeah, we polished it up a little. I'll agree. But other people started it, too. The The first slave, I think, was who was it? Who was the first slave ever in the history of time? It was in the Bible, wasn't it?

Well, there's lots of slaves in the Bible.

There you go.

Us has a uniquely terrible history when it comes to slavery in modern history. That is true. That is absolutely true and has an issue around race. Absolutely true. Still issues around race. Yes. Still issues around gender equality. Yes. If you're a white guy, particularly from a low income background right now, you're actually at the highest risk of suicide. Your economic prospects compared to your father have seen the biggest drop Okay. So two things can be true at once. It can be simultaneously true that we still got to deal with these issues and that we have this history and not throw anybody under the bus. Oh, yeah. No one has to be left behind. We have to rise together. We have to think about a way in which class is a big part of this, I think. What's very often missing, it's weird for me as a Brit coming to the US, one of the things I've really noticed is that the US has a class system, which I think is every bit as brutal as the British one. The difference is Americans, we pretend that we don't have a class system. The Brits don't hide it.

We have a king now. I always forget. King. We have an aristocracy. We have knights. We have all We have all kinds of... We're obsessed with class in the UK, where I come from. It's one of the reasons I ran here. One of the reasons I left America was there was less of it. But the US is a class system, too. If you look at trends for men, it's really working class men. It's men, you maybe didn't do so well in school, maybe haven't got a college degree from poorer parts of the country, et cetera. Those men are the ones who are suffering the most, from suicide, from substance problems, mental health problems, family problems, employment problems. Those men, they're really struggling, and that includes white men as well as black and Hispanic men. That's a class issue, not a race issue. And I think that quite often in the US, people are more comfortable talking about racial inequalities than they are about the overlapping class inequalities because most of the people talking about this are at the top of the class, higher.

Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of it's to our media. Our media is usually very well off people, and they're like, let me break out the racism drum and beat that when it's done. And of course, those things need to be addressed. But if that stuff becomes the only sound you hear, then everyone is going to continue to dance the same dance. That's the point. And so I think that that's where we're missing some of the evolution. But I think that that's starting to change. It's why people are sick of Hollywood and everything that they've created for a while.

I feel like that point you just made, if that's the only sound you hear. I think that's the point. What I've discovered in my family, my extended family, through my wife, et cetera, we have a lot of political diversity and a huge amount of class diversity. My wife is from a much more working class background than I am in the US on the Maryland, Pennsylvania border where she grew up. A lot of diversity. Actually, what I've found in talking to a lot of them is that they actually are significantly more tolerant about a lot of these issues than probably the mainstream media would think. But if that's all they hear, they need to hear the other bit as well. And I think this is... If we can move from or to and, right? So on gender, all this stuff we have to do is still stuff to do for me. I don't think there are enough women in politics in the US. I would love us to have a female President. I think we need to do more around women in certain occupations. Sure, yes. And we've got to tackle the male suicide crisis, and we've got to figure out why boys are doing so badly in schools, and we've got to figure out why male wages have been flatlining for decades.

It's an and, not an or. But there are too many people out there who have a vested interest in making an Or. So men are struggling, why? Because of women. We're going to blame women and blame feminism, blame the progressive.

No, that's not it.

Or women are struggling. You know why? Because of the men, because of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, et cetera. It has to be or. And that's where the clicks are. That's where the money is. That's where the speaking gigs come from. That's where your ratings come from. Is if you can position it, find a villain, find someone to blame. That's where you get drawn. But it's almost never true.

Right. A lot of times now the lens is the villain. That's the thing that I started to realize.

Find the villain.

The lens is the villain. And we didn't realize that we were being forced to look through this lens for so long because our media has just been the same. It's been so commandeered And so now it's becoming freer. And I think that that's scaring the powers that be. I think it's one of the reasons why they don't want TikTok taken over. They want to force a sale of TikTok. They're afraid that it'll share truths that they can't hold anymore. I've been thinking a bit about the role of podcast like this one and others, and I'd be interested to actually just ask you about this, because one of the things I've been thinking about is the way in which these are very free wheeling conversations.

We're talking. So there's a thought. We have a theme we're going to talk about. But what you've got is usually two people thinking out loud and trying to learn from each other and trying to say stuff. Sometimes you try and fact check what you're saying. But this is a very different environment to a classical media interview. You've got your points, you've got your bullet points. It's much more, and I think a lot of people are really attracted to it. Maybe especially young men. I think maybe they like that sense of like, we're just trying to figure this out. We're having a conversation.

It feels that vibe in a way. It does.

It does. It feels more like his... Almost like the overhearing. We're We're overhearing a conversation. So I know this is a little bit weird to be talking about our conversation. But I don't know why. It's not just a different media outlet. It's a different way of doing it.

Because at a certain point, you can't hide. I think there has to be some bit of... Enough of you will be revealed. It's like even sometimes I feel like if I don't fact check certain things and I'm learning how to have certain conversations, people will get an idea of who I am or who you are by listening to us for a certain period of time, and then they can make a fair judgment for themselves. It doesn't even have to be a good or bad judgment. We're not saying that either one of us is good or bad. We're probably saying that we're both both. We're just trying to have a conversation together. I think as a listener, you get that. You're like, okay, I don't maybe vibe with this guy. I'm glad I got to listen to him. It gives you value for your time. Do I put my time in. I'm grateful I got to listen to that person. I agree with some of the things they say, oh, I'd never thought about that. But you also get to see people as more complete. I think it goes back to what you're saying, that a lot of people can...

People aren't as simple. Both things can be true all the time for a lot of people, and they are.

Usually, they are. Usually, they are. Usually, two things are true. At least.

I think that's what a lot of it happen with podcast is it holds two, three, four, seven things true at the same time while you're having a conversation, which is very normal, as opposed to, get this answer, get this clip, make it short. We want to get how we feel across, and that's what matters.

It's more like the fullness of it. I thought about this quite a bit in terms of truth. I mentioned earlier the difference between telling the truth and being truthful. Someone who's just trying to call it as they see it, trying to be truthful. When you swear to do jury service or actually to do testimony, what do you swear? You swear to tell the The truth. The whole truth. The truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sorry, nothing but the truth. That make you triple down on it.

But think about that. Why don't they just say, I promise to tell the truth? The truth, yes, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Actually, the middle one is really interesting to me because, of course, what you could do is you could go to the stand and say things that are true. So you meet the first and the third. But you're missing something out. I think But right now people are hungry for the whole truth. They're actually hungry for people to just, look, I'm saying it all. I don't agree. You might disagree with three of the seven things I've said. But there's actually a sense of which these conversations, I think, are trying to get at something more like the whole truth, which is more just a broader conception of it. And you have the opportunity in the space to maybe get stuff wrong, to just think out loud, to come back. And that's completely at odds with the old media, which is more about, I'm going to take every word you say, literally. I'm going to take a clip of it and I'm going to fact check you. That's not how conversations work.

And this is a very different environment for conversation. I agree with you that it means you have more authenticity. But the thing I've come to value more than almost anything else when I'm talking to someone is that this person is trying to be truthful. They're being honest. They're looking stuff up. They're trying to figure. And if I say to them, that's not right. It's this. They go, oh, interesting. I'm going to choose. And the same with me. I'm just I'm not aspiring to try and be truthful in everything that I do. And if I get it wrong, I want to be told I'm getting it wrong, but I just want to try and be as honest as possible. Yeah.

And I think then it makes it not about you. It makes it about this greater presentation of let's be as honest as we can.

And learn from each other. So one of my weird back stories is that I am a massive fan of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century British liberal philosopher, so much so that I end up writing his biography.

John Stuart Mill? Let's bring up a JPEG of him.

This is just making my day, I got to tell you. Oh, wow. He also was the first person to introduce a bill to give women the right to vote in the UK.

Obviously, he was trying to get laid, too. Undenied.

That, in his case, was almost certainly not true. Although I spent a lot of time- Really, he enjoyed men? I spent a lot. No, he was just... Well, actually, the truth is that he had a woman who was in love with, who was married to somebody else. It was an unrequited situation, and so I spent quite a bit of time around that. But he had this lovely idea, which is that we learned from each other. We said we share the truth between us. He said that when you're arguing with someone, disagreeing with someone, try to imagine that you're both trying to climb to the top of the same mountain just by different routes. And I love that idea. And when I'm trying to debate with someone now, if I'm disagreeing with someone, I'm like, I think I'm trying to get to this. They probably have got some truth that I don't have, and that's great. But also let's assume, let's start with the assumption that we're trying to get to the same place. And you've got a different view about it. So if I'm arguing with a conservative who says it's all about marriage, we got to get everyone back to marriage.

I'm a bit skeptical about that. I don't think that's because that person is a crazy right wing misogynist who wants to entrap women again. I think they want a better life. I think they want better families. I think they want happier children, which is what I want. So we're just arguing about the means.

It is interesting how you can have two people that want the exact same thing. One will that they're this side, one will say that they're that side, and they cannot agree on shit. I don't understand. There's some minutia in there that I can't even figure out because they'll want the exact same things. They could even write, these are the three things I want, and the other I'll write these are the three things I want. But if they don't each say that they're on the same side, then they will almost find a way to disagree.

Because they want to disagree because at that point, that's become a bad form of tribalism. This is really interesting. One of the things that really has disturbed me about political trends recently is the clustering of ideas now. And so actually, now, if you're on one side or the other, you have to agree with. I agree. And so it used to be more possible to, well, I agree with that side on this and this side on this and whatever. And everyone was a different mixture. The idea that anybody is going to subscribe to all the views on the left or all the views on the right is dystopian, terrifying.

And no one even knows all of them either. And they're also distorted anyway.

And then if they're told, by the way that that policy idea is being proposed by your guy, then they suddenly support it. And if it's being proposed by the other guy, you're suddenly against it. And so what's actually happening now is you're defining your position based as much on, well, what does he think? Because I don't like him, and I'll take the other view. So you saw this massive swing towards being much more pro-immigration, for example, among Democrats after Donald Trump came to office in 2016 because he was so anti-immigration. Before Democrats were pretty moderate on immigration, but they suddenly became really, really pro-immigration. Why? The only explanation why is because he was so anti it. You see it in both directions. You can see it- Some people say also, though, that they wanted to load states up so that they could create more voters in certain states. I've never understood that argument. Really? Yeah, because they can't vote.

Right. But if you legalize them, if you just bring them in, and then you find quick pass to legalization, then they would be able to vote.

Well, one thing I will say I hope that if that idea is still out there, that the results of the last election kill it for good because we saw a massive swing to the Republicans among Hispanic Americans. And given that most of the immigrants that people are worried about are from Mexico and Southern America.

I don't know if they are, though. I think a lot of the immigrants that we're getting are also from... They were getting so many Haitians and stuff.

But they're not reliable Democrat voters, is my point. Any idea that the Democrats are trying to do this because they think, well, if we bring them all in and then legalize them, yay, well, that's not true. The idea that those groups are just going to reliably vote Democrat, that has gone out of the window.

I don't know. I think if I come in and somebody's feeding me the first hand that it needs me, that's probably the hand that I would think that I'm going to cater to. I don't know if that's a definite thing that they were doing. You know what I'm saying? It's hard to say if it is or isn't. But letting 21 million immigrants in We had two Border Patrol agents on, and they said it was a nightmare for them. It was a nightmare for them and their families, the stress that they went through, the fact that they would just have to get an agreement from somebody, that they would come and meet the agent like They were a middle person. They would have a connection piece to America, and they'd have to sign an agreement that they would come back and meet that person at a certain time or place and never show up, and then there's no trail for them. The plan was not... There There was no plan, it felt like.

That's a better explanation than that there was this secret plan to create millions of voters.

Yeah, I don't know if there are or not.

No plan is better. And again, it's an example of the extremes winning. It's like, actually, most people have probably got pretty moderate views on immigration, or at least used to, which is we should control our borders, which is not a controversial idea in any other country in the world.

Because you can't know a business unless you know the inventory, right? How can you do anything?

The idea in any European country that people should only be there legally. Every European country thinks that, right? So it's not... Of course, we've now had so many people come in that we've got a different problem, but we should secure our borders. We should actually have pretty good legal immigration systems. I'm biased. I'm an immigrant. But good, legal immigration has been great for this country. Properly controlled, legal, good, right? And so the idea that you're either for or against immigration strikes me as completely dumb. You've got to be what immigration do we need and want?

Yeah, you got to think a little step further.

But the trouble is the way that our politics works right now is you basically either got to be like anti-immigration and anti-immigrants or you've got to be open border. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels.

Yeah, I agree. That's how it feels. Well, that's another issue that we just have with this, we don't have enough parties. We don't have enough parties, and there's not enough. And I think that it's also kept that way. Capitalism is just there's only so much you can do. You can only do so much. And then there's a lot of darker forces at play. I think that just care about finances on no matter what side of things you're on. And then I don't even know if America still owns itself anymore, to be honest with you. I feel like we're just a LLC of the Middle East sometimes. But Different people think different things.

The thing that I worry most about is that we lose our sense of optimism.

I agree. That's the next thing to go. And when that goes, it gets really bad.

That's bad for any country, but I think it's virtually existential for America because one of the things that people always say about Americans, they're like, Oh, they don't think about... They have no sense of history. Whereas in Europe, all we think about is history. In the UK, one thing I ran away from is just like, it's always Winston Churchill, and World War II, and World War I, and the War of the Roses. I have relatives who fought in those wars. They're important. But we're always looking... Basically, Europe feels like it has been looking in the rear view mirror for centuries, whereas Americans are like, Yeah, that happened. That It's interesting, but we're going there. We're going to the moon. We're going to wherever. We're going to build a better economy. There is this thing about looking forward, which I've always loved about America. It's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. It's one of the reasons I finish raising my kids here. It's like, That That future orientation. That fucking Corvette. I worry about that on both sides now. I don't like you have American carnage from the right, and you have climate catastrophe from the left.

Take your pick. But that catastrophizing, that sense for the first time ever, we're seeing people now that they are not confident their kids will be better off than them. That's a huge problem in a country like America. And I think it's based on this problem we were just talking about, which is this zero-sum idea that somehow there's only so much of something to go around, money or empathy or whatever. And so if Group A is getting more of it, that means Group B is getting less of it.

It's the same with the male-female thing.

Exactly. It's like, well, we can't If women are doing better, maybe that's why men are doing worse. And for women to rise, men have got to forth like crazy stuff. But people think that. Same on immigration, by the way. People think more immigrants, bad for America, et cetera. We're constantly thinking about zero sum, whereas America at its best has always been positive some. In other words, we can grow. We grow the cake and argue less about how to divide it up. We can all be more. We can get better, we can get bigger and all rise. And I think that's been lost, not least on gender.

But let's talk about some escapes from men. Let's talk about how do men... How do we combat some of this illness? Because men are resilient. Men are warriors, I believe, in our hearts and in our spirits. I believe that I've seen enough connectivity amongst men that we want to move forward, and we want to do it together. What are the ways that you recommend?

Well, we've talked about male spaces and having groups and spaces for men.

I think that's usually the point. Starting one of those is good if you want.

Yeah. If you're like, and you're seeing that, there's this thing called the Men's Sheds Movement. Have you heard of that? It's coming over from Australia. It's just guys who get into a shed and start fixing stuff together. Really? Bring it up. Shoulder to shoulder, the Men's Sheds Movement. Oh, I love this. It's basically about guys, and they get in a shed and they fix And it's very male because it's about fixing stuff.

Us Men's Shed Association has partnered with Grouper to offer eligible members a 65 or older payments for staying healthy and socially active. Okay. So the Men's Shed. Can you do an image of it? Can we just do Men's Shed movement images? There's some fellows right there building a little...

Because when men...

What is that? A bird house or something?

Men have to be doing something else while they're being together, right? It's just harder for us to just be together. When was the last time a friend of yours said, Let's just meet for coffee and then sit down and stare at each other for two hours?

Yeah, that guy is obviously trying to be sexy buddies or whatever, I I think, yeah, you got to find something to do together. Paint something, look for something. Let's go look for something.

Be of service. Find service. I think that's usually important.

Boys and Girls, join your local Boys and Girls Club chapter. You can volunteer there. What's another one somebody said?

You can be a Big Brother. Yeah, that was a good one. I'm just going through the process for that myself. Congrats. Signing up to do that because I think that- Yeah, I want to do that. I know you talked to Scott about this, but just being a presence, I think is usually important, and raising other people's kids It's like there's this line, it takes a village to raise a child. That's true, but here's the thing. Some of the villages need to be men. We're in that village, and we're helping to raise those kids, our neighbors' kids. That statement that it takes a village is right.

Oh, you don't realize as a parent, if there's a kid hanging out of your house, sometimes one of your kids, friends or something, you have a ton of influence on that kid. Totally. I mean, I got so much influence from most of my influence.

You realize how important, how many men there are out there who sometimes just need to be asked. There was this example happened in a school. I think it was a predominantly black school. They had this day where they were going to teach the boys how to tie a tie. The dads were going to come in with their sons and teach their sons how to tie a tie. But then they realized that half the dads were not there. Half the boys didn't have dad, didn't have fathers, or their fathers were in prison, or they'd gone away, or whatever. They then really realized this was going to be a huge problem because some of the boys to have their dad come in and do it, and the others were going to feel left out. They just did a call out to the community. I think it just... I don't even know what it was, like a Facebook call. Could we get some volunteers? We just need some men to come in and help these boys. They had something like five times as many men as they needed to. These guys just all came. It's really beautiful.

So men are looking for it.

Yes. Just need to be asked and called. And the other thing I'll say, because we haven't had a chance to talk about this yet, is that the The fact that male teachers have become so much less common, I think, is a real problem. It's gone from 33 % male in the '80s to 23 % male now, and it continues to fall. And I think that's a problem for all kinds of reasons. I think that for boys to see men in a classroom, to actually have them as role models. Also to see the education is a thing that men care about as well.

That's a great point. One of my greatest influences was this guy, Charles Aldrich. He was my teacher. He was missing a finger. How did he lose his finger? You You know what happened to him? He was at a baseball game cheering on his son. He stood up, his wedding ring got caught on a piece of metal on the bleachers and pulled his finger right off.

I wish I hadn't asked now, but God bless him.

Pretty crazy. My dad was missing a finger. So I just related. I was like, Oh, God wants these men without fingers to love me or whatever. That's how I was thinking as a kid. It was just crazy. But that's how you think as a kid. Yeah.

Okay. So he was a huge influence on you. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

He was like- Same for me. I had this teacher, Mr. Wyatt, English teacher. Up until that point, we were all like, words and poems. Yeah, Wyatt's a fuck.

Yeah.

A bunch of 15, 16-year-old boys. And then we had Mr. Wyatt. Mr. Wyatt was a Korean War veteran. He was a bus driver in part-time. He was a total curmudgeon. And he had us reading- Korean bus driver sounds very risque. No, no, no. He was a Korean veteran. He'd fought in the Korean War. Oh, Korean veteran. Sorry. So he'd fought in the Korean War. Yeah. And he was just this curmudgeonly guy. But he had us reading this poetry, and he loved it so much that we ended up loving it and getting into it. And I was like, maybe this whole writing words thing. I used to be in remedial English way back before that. But maybe it's... Hey, maybe guys can do this, too. And it was a huge change for me. And I mentioned before that my son is now teaching in Baltimore City. That's one. But we're missing about a million men if we were to get close to a gender equality. I'm not saying we'll get to that. But I think that the best answer to some of the problems that a lot of boys have got is real living, flesh and blood men in their lives, their dads, their neighbors, their uncles, but also their teachers.

The other thing male teachers do, they coach. Between 30 and 40 % of male teachers are also coaches, much higher than for women for all kinds of reasons we could go into. But the point is simply that for every male teacher, you get like half a coach. If we want more male coaches to be coaching our boys, sports teams, et cetera, we need more male teachers. And I can't believe that we're just letting the share of male teachers just go down and down and down and down, and no one's doing anything about it.

Yeah, especially even we had a great TV show here called Prince, Vice Principals or whatever. And that shit, you think what it helped it was with Danny McBride was in it.

How long ago was that?

It's a couple of years ago, so it might help a little bit, but definitely it might have upped the vibes of some of these guys being teachers.

And also, do you know Abba Elementary?

Yeah, people like that TV show.

That's got a bunch of male teachers in it, too, which is like-So maybe you need influence that.

I remember when I was a kid, they had Coach was on and stuff like that, but I guess it didn't really resonate that much. But they had like, what was that TV? Art Dead Poet Society, whatever. Yeah, Robin Williams. But I guess there was the one with... They set up a Tech of my answer. Who's that guy? Malcolm L Jackson or whatever that guy's name was. No, he looks like older, but still they said it would take a man 600 years to get out of this here prison. You know what I'm talking about? I do not. He talks like that. No. That was a good accent. But I don't know. He's in Shawshank Redemption. You know what his name? He's like Morgan Freeman. He played a school teacher. Really? Lean on me, it was called.

Yeah. But also there's this new one. Lean on me. There's this other one, the Holdovers, just a couple of years ago with Paul Giametti. Is that how they say his name right?

Yes, I saw that. Yeah.

And again, it's really good. And what those things have in common is there's this relationship between this older guy, this younger man, and they learn from each other, and they go through some stuff together. It's really beautiful.

Yes, it was. That's a cool point. That's a great movie.

And I was really pleased to see that because it came up again with this thing. But one of the things that really frustrates me is that people will say, oh, boys need more. We need more positive male role models. And I'm like, we do. It's actually you can't create them out of thin air. You can't just add water and create male role model. But one thing we could do is make sure we have a lot more men in our schools. That's something we could do. We could have scholarships, we could have outreach programs, we could be incentivizing men. We could also be making it much easier to become a teacher as a second career, because one of the things that we know is that men are much more likely to go into teaching later. They do something else first and then go. But it's really hard to do that. It shouldn't be that hard.

No, I agree. That's That's a great point.

Instead of lamenting the lack of male role models, how about having more male teachers? I would love it if more politicians... I actually kept waiting for Tim Walsh on the Democrat side.

We asked him to come on here. We asked him and Kamal to come on here, but I would have loved to talk with Tim Walsh.

Tim Walsh would have been a perfect person to lead that campaign, wouldn't he?

To just say, look- His whole interview. He seemed like this cheery guy.

But he's high school teacher. So he was the first, actually, career public school teacher to run for such high office. He was also a coach. But imagine if he'd done a campaign around, we want to recruit more men to teaching. We want more men teaching, coaching, helping, like a really positive pro-male campaign. I think he would have been an amazing spokesman for that, and I think it could have been bipartisan. I agree. I think he could have found some people on the right that would have agreed of that?

Yeah, I think. I don't know if it felt like all the time he was making all of his own choices. That's the only thing about some of these parties. You start to wonder- Too much control. If there's bigger powers. And then you're like, and you can feel that sometimes it feels like, but I don't know.

Well, it's back to this point about the different media environment now, which is this free wheeling, be authentic, just go with the flow environment now. I think people watch the politicians in those environments so they can make a judgment about what person they are. It's not scripted. That's right. They get a feel for them. They get a feel for them. Exactly.

Some of them ask, do we get edit or something? Like, Timothy Shalem, they came on, they didn't ask for one edit. They didn't ask to look at anything. They didn't ask. I was like, that's wild. Then we've had other people come on in their They're aging or whatever. We get all fucking nitpicky or whatever, some little fucking lizard.

We'll ask to edit stuff out.

Or just say certain things. Now, look.

I didn't know that was an option.

If something horrible happens, somebody dies or something, we'll edit it out. It's like we don't want something horrible or somebody turning blue. You don't want to talk about somebody can't breathe or whatever. Like, yeah, we're not going to fucking sit there and ask questions to somebody who doesn't have-But anything short of that.

If I die, you might edit that out. But anything else I do, But it's just crazy that- You can't control it. But actually, this is what happened, I think. This is a great example. Before he was selected, like Walsh, he was famous for being... He did the weird thing and he was quite... Yeah, he was odd. But no, he described the Republicans as weird. That's what I mean. He just had a certain... But actually, what happened was that then he was told to be super careful. And you get these politicians. They sometimes remind me, they're like a guy carrying an incredibly precious vase across a polished floor. They're so terrified. They're going to slip and say the wrong thing. Everyone's like, be disciplined. Don't say anything wrong. We don't want to screw up the news cycle. Don't have a gaffe. Don't say something. Exactly. Just stand still.

Don't say anything. And hope for the best. That's crazy.

But I do think that was the old politics. I think it was all about message discipline. I think that the Walsh before the pick and the Walsh after the pick, if you watched them-I bet they were totally different. They're totally different people.

I know. I still wish he would come on and talk to us. We still try to get-Maybe he will now. That's a good point. I'm going to reach out again. We even tried to get Kamla after to see if she would come on and talk to us because that's the only thing. I just felt like you don't know who some of these people are. And not even that you do after a conversation, there's still a politician. But at a certain point, you just can get a feel for them. And also people at home can just get a feel. You want a little bit more feel these days.

You had Bernie on recently, right? Yeah, it was great. Have you had him on before?

We had so much fun. No, I'd have him on again, though, dude. We had a blast. We just have so many things that we both care about, it seems like. So There are places that men can get involved. It's like a Big Brother program. Do know this about Big Brother program. If you're only going to be in town for a couple of weeks, make sure it's going to be a place where you're going to be able to commit because you're saying to a child or something, I'm going to be there every other week or every two years.

At least a year. In fact, the evidence is that if you do it for less than a year, it's actually harmful. Right. Better to not do it at all if you can't do it for a year.

So that's something right there. And even just men getting together to take a walk together, think together, spend time together. It's like, how do we start to build those new things? Things. Also, some of that is the cycle has changed. A lot of our energy came from wars and stuff, and there were a lot more bowling leagues. There's a book, it's called Bowling Alone, maybe.

Yeah, Robert Putnam. All about what he calls social capital, which is basically just this connection and community and how important that is for people. And he talks about the decline of bowling leagues, which are basically just structures through which to have this solidarity.

Yeah, it's just hiding from your wife for an hour and you and your buddy's calling each other fat, right? But that's what men need sometimes.

But you can't say to your wife, I'm going out to just hang out with the guys and call each other fat. You have to say, I've got bowling tonight, right? It has to be a thing, right? I've got darts tonight. I've got whatever. It's a thing, right? We can't just say, I'm just going to... Maybe a bit more now, but you needed a... And I think it's a deeper truth that men do need a reason sometimes to be together, and that's just okay.

Right. Yeah, you don't want to tell your wife, I'm just going, Hey, it's like, I'm going to do something. That's a man thing, too, is doing something. We're creatures that are supposed to be in action, right? It's like the more sedentary I get, I just notice that. It's like, if I do the next right thing I'm supposed to do, everything goes fine. The second I stand around and think, it's like things get a little weird.

Yeah, just a bit of forward momentum, right? Do the next thing.

Yeah, it's just keep it moving, man. It does help. It helps you. But then, yeah. But what was I thinking? I wrote down Was I making a point there or no? I can't remember. I wrote down this question because I thought a lot about this, like men and women stuff, right? I'm glad that we talked a lot about it just because women have had this evolution in a way, societally and financially, and they had to do that. It felt like to get more respect. Maybe if there had been a different respect in the beginning, things could have been different. But we live in a capitalistic society type of thing. I wrote down what I wanted to say because it was too hard for me to remember and say. I was saying it seems like through the feminist movements and trying to make more gender equality, close the income gap, et cetera, that women were striving to have what men had, such as more income, such as more equitable treatments, such as being able to strive in the workforce, having more access to educational opportunities, et cetera, that women wanted more power or what was conceived of as power.

In a capitalistic society, money is power. But is it really power, though? I think it is pretty lonely and disconnected when men achieve the status of being powerful, either through a lot of recognition or wealth or just producing a lot in general. I'm not saying that men could not have this type of power and not be connected to the world around them and people around them, but I think for most men, it was basically lonely and disconnected. Is this what women really want when it comes to equitable treatment, et cetera, or having the same opportunities for financial success and upward mobility? Do women really want what men have or had? I wonder if women are really the ones that, generally speaking, have it right as far as being connected to others, being able to communicate better, generally, and providing more of a home in the sense of a settled space around themselves wherever they go or wherever they are. I think it's interesting that in trying to balance out male and female, the female wants to move towards the male. I get it, but I just wonder if maybe it made more sense to have the male move towards the female.

And I don't mean that men should be women. What I do mean, though, is that these attributes that women seem to possess based primarily on their sex and some gender roles seem to be more fulfilling overall. So wouldn't it make more sense that the men would move a little closer to them, or the women would tout that what they have is good enough and it is best instead of going ahead and trying to get what the men have. Like I said, I get it, and I can understand why women want what they perceive men as having. I just wonder if that's really the best direction for women and for children and for men and boys and for people in general. Do we really want to show our children that women can dominate and produce in the same ways that men can? Personally, I don't really think so. I think men have it wrong. I think that the men should be masculine and women should be feminine. But I think that the expression of masculinity, generally speaking, in our society, has been weak and disconnected. And honestly, sometimes dumb. Sorry, that was so much words. That was good.

But I just did it. I was trying to like, I was like, I can't remember this, but this is what I think. It's not a clown on women or that their journey or anything. It's just like, what are we all really looking for?

I think we're at a really important moment for that. I see the movement of the last, let's say, 50 years as largely being about women trying to get more economic independence. I don't really like the language of power around this because it tends to presume that it's power of person A over power of person B. It's much more like opportunity, independence, chance to flourish, to be you, to rise.

To let yourself be seen, to let you... Yes. And to feel equal, to feel like, Oh, I can do these things as well. To get equal respect.

I feel like we've been... So I think this sense of if you think about the more female virtues, your framing as being more about care and connection and so on, and the more male ones being around material, money, et cetera. I do think that it was quite right for women to have more opportunities to acquire more of that economic opportunity and economic independent. Quite right. Now, I think that we might see the next 50 years are about some of the movement in the other direction, which is that men also learning that it's not actually just getting to the top of the economic ladder. It's like that's not what life is about. It's important to provide. It's important to bring material resources to your family, to your tribe, to your community. But it's also important to have those relationships and that care. If that's seen as more of a female virtue, then I agree that we might see a little bit more movement now of men towards women. But in the end, it's just about creating opportunities for all of us to be able to flourish and to rise and to do that together and to have equal respect for what we each choose to do.

That's the biggest. Without one set being dependent on the other, without one group having power over the other, without one group being seen to be better than the other, or one set of virtues being better than the other. And instead to just say, look, we're all in the end, I hope that my work focusing on boys and men is partly in the end humanism. It's partly about in the end, we want to get to a world where we're all able to flourish together. We're not going to get there if we pretend there are no differences between men and women. We're not going to get to equality through androgyny, right? Pretending there are no differences between men and women, right? But we can learn from each other. And isn't that amazing? Isn't that an amazing opportunity? And so I think the opportunities for men now to grow and expand our roles as fathers, as coaches, as mentors, as community leaders in the home, in the community, whilst also, I think building staff and providing, in other words, reforming masculinity rather than ditching it and saying, We don't need masculinity anymore, or somehow trying to get the old masculinity back.

So I think when I'm feeling optimistic, and it's good to be optimistic sometimes, I actually think what we're experiencing now is the birth pangs of a different way. And I think it's all been about women up until now, and I think that's understandable. But I think the next few decades have got to be about how do we help men as well, how do we help men rise, not instead of women, but with women, and women rise with men.

Yeah, and how do we even... Yeah, Yeah, and evolution takes pain. It takes discomfort for everyone. Change is hard. Yes, change is hard. Also, I think, though, when you look at people having the time to do things in the evenings and stuff, it's like a lot of people live in separate households. I talk about it with the holidays. The holidays are a bummer a lot of times now because you got to go visit. Both your parents have been married two times in divorce. Now you're visiting six people or something. You're dividing your Christmas up. It's like we're dividing up the the comfort we had, and it's becoming a nightmare because you're having to drive so many places to see so many people.

I think the spirit of what you're saying throughout this whole conversation has been about equal empathy and respect for men and women. And I feel like there was probably a time when if women complained about stuff and wanted more power, men would be patronizing or maybe roll their eyes at them a little bit. Off she goes again. But I now think the opposite is happening. I think when we talk about some of the problems that men are having and men saying, I'm struggling, I'm trying to figure this out, there's sometimes a tendency for people to roll their eyes and just say, Well, get over it. Neither of those responses is good enough. We need to look each other in the eye and just say, Look, I'm here for you. Let's figure this out together, and not pit us against each other. The thing I really worry about is, particularly politically right now, that we're somehow going to end up, young men and young women, seeing each other as somehow not on the same team against each other. You see this growing political divide, cultural divide, less dating. I think it will be really bad news if we don't see young men and women seeing that their interests as being more aligned than an antagonism with each other.

Well, politics, it's a societal structure. I know at some point it's something you need for diplomacy and stuff, but I feel like it's been so commandeered. I don't think most people even know what it is anymore or don't believe in the sanctity of it. But I do think that in the end, that other humans are your real government. So Your neighbor is your government. It's norms.

It's the-Yes, your tradition, whatever.

And I think it is. Men need to just wake up, shave, put on a clean shirt, and be ready for whatever blessings do come or the things that they create for themselves, too. I think some of it is just showing up for the day in the world. But also, it would be nice. We need to. What the fuck do I know? But it'd be nice if families were together and that everybody didn't have all these separate homes to It was just everything didn't feel so divided. I feel like even managing a life feels very dividing for a kid when one week they're here, one week they're there. That's hard. Then the parents are separate, and they probably sit there. Yeah, maybe they go on, but they wish maybe they'd have been able to figure... I don't know. What do I know? I think I romanticize a lot.

The key thing is the relationships. I found this very interesting study that said that kids whose father is not resident with the mother, doesn't live with the mom anymore, but has a good relationship with them. They do better than the kids whose dad is with them, but they have a terrible relationship with. In the end, it's the relationship that matters. But your point about care and nurturing. Sometimes I think we obsess about the structure, and we don't actually think, actually, what really matters here is the substance. What's the relationship? One of the reasons I feel so strongly about that is because so many kids now, most kids to parents without college degrees are born outside marriage, most. That's the norm outside of the college-educated class. And so I don't want to say to those fathers, Oh, well, sorry, you've already failed. You're not going to bench the dads. Good point. It's incredibly important that fathers hear the message that they matter in their kids' lives. Yeah, it's a great point. Whether or not they are with the kid's mother. In some ways, if they're not with the kid's mother romantically anymore, the father might be even more important because there's a good chance that that kid is going to be struggling in other ways.

There is no hall pass for fatherhood. If you become a father, it doesn't matter how you ended up having that kid. You have a moral responsibility to be there for that kid, period. That is not a negotiable. Now, you may or may not be married to the mom. I'm not saying it isn't easier to be married to the mom.

Right, but that doesn't really make it different always. No.

Also, don't point at these dads who, for whatever reason, are not married to the mom. That's a good point. Blame them somehow.

Yeah, you're right. I just have this romantic view. But yeah, I think being a father is just being a father. And it also-What do I know? What the fuck am I even talking?

And it never ends. I'll say that it doesn't end with being a father. I mentioned my own father, my dad earlier, and watching him as a grandfather to my sons has also been an extraordinary experience and made me think about... I'm already thinking about what grandfather I'm going to be. My sons are in their 20s now, from late 20s to early 20s. And so And that's the next stage for me. And I'll tell you, one of my sons really struggled in high school. He's the one who's now become a teacher. And when he went to college, he chose to go to college back to the UK, but not just back to the UK. He went back to Cardiff in Wales, where my parents live, because he wanted to be near my parents. And he told me once that on a day if he was really struggling, he'd get out, some mental health issues, whatever. He was really struggling He could look when he was walking to his lectures at college, he could look to the north. And a couple of miles north, there's this big tower of a hospital right next to where my parents live.

And he said to me, even on a really bad day, I know that I can look up there and I know that grandpa's there, and if I need him, he'll come. I want my grandsons and granddaughts saying that about me one day, too. The point is, as parents, you do the best you can. Then as grandparents, you help out. And then as uncles and nephews or neighbors or mentors, you help out. But it never ends. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a beautiful thing. I As a father, to see my father being such an amazing support for my son. That's interesting.

Because you're in the middle.

I'm in the middle. And guess what? Sometimes maybe grandad is going to be the better person for your son in this moment than you are. And what an amazing blessing that is to have that. I feel so incredibly fortunate that my kids have had that opportunity to have that relationship with their grandparents. So I've gone from thinking, oh, God, really? Grandfather? I have to do it all over again, really? To being like, you know what? Yeah, this could be good.

Yeah, I just appreciate you thinking about this stuff with Richard. And I know there's a lot of other things we could talk about, too, about recovery programs in 12 Step. We could save that for another conversation. Anytime. I feel like this has been a nice conversation and just some good food for thought and not to harp on man or what's going on. If you feel uncomfortable, it's like, I think there's a sense inside of a lot of us of what do we do? Where is my purpose? Where is that coming from? That's okay. Yeah.

Thank you. I've really enjoyed this.

Me too, Richard. I appreciate it. Richard Reeves, you have books out, don't you?

Yeah, Of Boys and Men.

Okay. Excellent. And if people want to get involved with your organization, do they just donate? Is there volunteer possibilities or what are the things?

Donations would be great. So it's aibm. Org. There is a donate button there. We'd love your support. But also the main thing is just to be part of this conversation, and let's have a positive conversation about boys and men without putting down women and girls and just love the men and boys in your life. That's the mission I'm on. I feel called to this work now, and I'm excited to be part of it.

I love hearing about it, man, and I appreciate you just being patient with me today while we just had this conversation. Yeah, this was a great practice for me and just learning to talk and think about things together.

It's amazing that you want to get more into this space. Thank you.

Yeah, it's just so important, man. And I'm going to have an ad, too, at the end of this for Valor Recovery. It's a sex and love addiction group that I associate with. And so If you're struggling with porn addiction and that thing, or an animosity disorders, anything. If you are just struggling with something, that's a great program right there. My great friend Steve started it, and I've been in recovery with him for years. Just blessed, man. Blessed to be on this journey and just know that other men are on it, too, and trying to figure it out and stay alive. Dude, it gives you some... You know what's weird? It gives you a little bit of purpose.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. No. And that life without purpose is not It sure isn't, man.

Thank you so much, Richard Reeves. Thank you. You bet. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone.

Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take..