The Secret Struggles of Boys and Men

When did masculinity become synonymous with toxicity? That’s just one of the topics covered in this candid man-to-man convo with Oliver and ‘Of Boys and Men’ author Richard Reeves. They get real about what it means to be a father-figure and what every boy-mom needs to know. Plus, find out what teen boys won't tell you about unless you do THIS!

Learn more about the American Institute for Boys and Men at https://aibm.org/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson, and my name is Oliver Hudson.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
We wanted to do something that highlighted our.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Relationship and what it's like to be siblings. We are
a sibling.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Railval No, no, sibling, don't do that with your mouth, revelry.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
That's good, Oliver Hudson.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Here, we already have our guests waiting in the waiting room,
so I don't want to be too long winded here.
But I'm not going to talk about my life because
I'm going to talk about my life with Richard Reeves.
Richard Reeves is our guest. I saw him. I think
he was on CNN. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
He wrote a book. It's called of Boys and Men.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Why the modern male is struggling, whyat matters and what
to do about it? He hits upon all of these
really amazing subject matter. He talked about toxic masculinity. He
seems to be sort of spouting the things off that
I believe and that I talked about with my friends
about boys and men. And I have two boys of
my own, and he founded the American Institute for Boys

(01:23):
and Men, the AIBM, and I just want to.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Get into it with him.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
I want to talk all about this because I'm very,
very fascinated, and I'm grateful that he's agreed to come on.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
So bring them in. Man, let's chat. How you doing good?

Speaker 4 (01:38):
How are you?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
I'm great? Thank you for indulging me. This is exciting.
I saw you. I can't remember where it was, whether
it was on CNN or you were talking just you know,
about boys and men and toxic masculinity and the importance
of it all. And I have two boys myself, eighteen

(01:59):
and fifteen, and everything that you were saying was resonating
with me. And you know, I was like, man, I
can I talk to Richard? I wonder if he'll talk
to me. And so I'm very grateful that you took
the time to come and have a chat with me.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. Likewise, I'm very happy to do this.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
I mean, first of all, just we'll get to why
I am excited to have this conversation, because it's something
that I've been thinking about, especially since sort of the
Me Too movement, having boys who have grown up in
sort of that environment where yes, you know, it was
great that the pendulum did swing, but as with everything,
it seems like that pendulum swings very very far and

(02:40):
watching my boys grow up in that world and them
trying to understand what it's like to be a boy
and have these sort of feelings of just masculinity, of puberty,
of just advancing and how they had to sort of
navigate this world was really interesting to me. And I

(03:01):
would ask them questions about it, but they're kids and
they're like, I don't know, you know, they would just
give me that kind of an answer. But going back though,
just about your life, where did you grow up and
did you have siblings and what was sort of that
home life like for you?

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, I did so. I grew up in Peterborough,
just north of London and you know, great parents in
fact an older brother or younger sister. And she was
asked by theo Von when I was in his podcast
about my relationship with my dad, and I just said,
without thinking about it, well, I've never, for a moment
doubted my father's love for me. And he said, I

(03:44):
wonder what that feels like because he hasn't had that experience.
And I came away from that exchange with him thinking
three things. One, what an extraordinary blessing that is? And
I kind of knew it but also just felt it
in a new way. Just what it means at the
core you to know, have an absolute certainty of your
father's love. Secondly, I saw the pain in him, had it.

(04:08):
The third thing I thought was, like, God, I hope
my three sons feel well more than anything else, right,
just like if I passed anything on I just like
I want my three boys to know have the same certainty.
So don't even have to ask themselves the question, right right,
that's that would be that's what I want.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
That's yes, of course. And you know I've come from
a divorced family. You know, my sister and I we
have some halfs now. But you know, when I was
five divorced. Then my stepdad came into my life, and
I guess, of course, there was questions of whether my
dad had that sort of unconditional love for me. As

(04:46):
I've gotten older, I've gotten I've had you know, gained
a better relationship with him, and I know his struggles.
I know what he went through, you know, passing on
these patterns you know from his childhood because his father
left him when he was five years old, he didn't
have any of the resources to learn to cope with

(05:07):
what that meant for him dealing with his feelings. So
essentially he was just recreating and mimicking these patterns and
I was sort of the victim of it. At the
same time, I, at sixteen, was adamant about not repeating
that and wanting.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
To be the greatest dad ever.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
But it's weird because I do believe that my dad,
my real dad, does have that love for me, even
though he hasn't shown it, even though we have no
real connection as far as a relationship goes.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
We text and we talk now and again. But I
wonder why. I wonder if that's delusional.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Do you feel it? You must figure, you must feel it.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I do because I understand and I have compassion for
what he went through and he I mean, within the
texts and sort of his bit of remorse, it feels
like it's there. It's just hard for him to sort
of truly express, you know, whereas my stepdad has created

(06:16):
that for me, has given me that love from a male,
you know, from a father, which is what I consider him.
But I guess I wonder the question is does it
matter where it comes from, if it's biological love or
if it's stepfather love.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah, I mean, I think that the answer is probably
it's easiest and most ideal if it comes from your
biological father. Right now, that's just that's because he's probably
the one who's most likely to be there and be around.
But the evidence that I've looked at suggests that what
really matters is that you feel it from someone and
that you can. I mean, there's a reason why we

(06:52):
use the term father figure quite frequently. How often have
you heard anyone say mother figure? She was a real
mother figure to me. That's not a very commonly used phrase,
but people say he was a father figure to me.
And what I think that means is that to some extent,
it's that sense of social fathering whatever it can be
called and be done by other men, but I think

(07:15):
it has to be done, and it has to be
done by men, And I think sometimes feel like we
get trapped between this world where it's like it has
to be a biological father, can only be a biological
father and a nuclear family, and won't beside anybody that
doesn't do it that way, right, and that people who
kind of say we don't need dads anymore. You know,
we got it from here. Thanks for the last ten
thousand years, guys, we got it from here. And actually

(07:36):
there's kind of benches all fathers and says there isn't
anything intrinsically valuable about what men bring to the parenting exercise.
And that's just flat wrong and very disempowering. And so
finding that middle ground, which is saying, yeah, men matter
and families come in different shapes and sizes, is I
think the truth, and I think the evidence bears that out, Like,

(07:57):
dads matter, but dads can be dads that can also
be like also get mentors. We've written this piece from
one of our board members who've kind of talked about
his Scout leader, his principal, and his pastor in his
case being the three black men who kind of showed
him what it meant to be a man because his
own dad wasn't around. So the kid doesn't even have
to be one person either. It can be different people

(08:19):
in your life building different roles, but it does have
to be adults who care for you and love you.
And it's you know the phrase it takes a village
to raise a child. I think that's true. But the
thing I would add is, and some of the villagers
have to be men.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Why do you think men, for the most part, father's
father figures have you know, sort of been looked at
as not a throwaway, but just not as important.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
I think because we have treated bothering itself and that
male parenting role as secondary to the female mothering role.
And that can lead to either a super progressive view,
which means, okay, so we don't need dad at all,
thank you, as I said, we got it from here,
or be i'd super reactionary one, which is like, absolutely,

(09:07):
dad's a completely different than you have to have them
in traditional nuclear families. My dad's the head of the household,
and mum knows her place and all of that and
so and now, of course the rest of us are
just trying to make it work in this difficult new
world in between those two extremes.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, I mean, did you like when you got interested
in this subject matter which I want to get into,
But did you go deep?

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Did you look back?

Speaker 3 (09:27):
I mean, was there historical elements to all this, primal
elements to it? You know, because the gender roles, I
guess have evolved and I are always evolving. We're always evolving,
you know, so it probably looked a lot different. One
hundred and fifty years ago than it does today. So
did you take all of that into account and to

(09:48):
sort of come up with.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Your beliefs and what you think about right now?

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, And again, the trick here is to acknowledge that
there are some things that are to use your word,
crime more and that some of those will be different
on average between men and women, and to allow those
to somehow beIN determinative right just to say what to
be prescriptive. And because people are so afraid that if

(10:17):
you acknowledge any differences that's primal level between say men
and women, for mothers and fathers, you're somehow going to
use that as a cudule to beat women back down again,
right and say, yes, you see, and I understand that fear,
and it's a legitimate fear given the long arc of
human history. But the trouble is that fear leads people
to kind of just not acknowledge those differences, and that

(10:39):
makes you sound, honestly just shit crazy. I'm very taken
by this book, Boy Marm by Ruth Whipman, And you know,
I like it because she criticizes me in the book,
but I still love her. But I love her book
and she's like, she's like a good feminist who has boys.
And then it's led to the conclusion that there are
actually some differences that are not just socialized, right, And

(11:02):
I think that's just true. And when it comes to
sort of fathering, I think there is you know, there's
there's just a different role that we bring. Of course,
most of what we do is the same, but there
are some differences, Like I think dads do bring something
a little bit different to the parenting enterprise and so domands.
And we can talk about kind of what those are,
but I think the kind of point is just to

(11:23):
say that has to be possible without that being read
as a reactionary mood. Right, It's like, where is he
going with this? Is he going in a reactionary or
traditional direction? I think that's the trap that too many
people have ended up in, which is that we somehow
feel that we can't honor the different roles that men
and fathers play without that somehow signal that we want
to retreat on women. That's just not true.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, no, I know, I know.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
I would always say, you know, when I read a
little bit about how you you know, just the toxic
masculinity and before I even read anything or knew anything
about you, I would always say, you know, the sad
thing is that it feels like the word masculine, masculinity
has a negative connotation now just generally, you know, because
that toxic just you know, even if it's not in

(12:08):
front of it, it seems to just sort of, you know,
appear in front of.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
It right place in fly, which is bullshit.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know, it frustrates me. Sometimes masculinity is amazing, it's great.
It's a great thing to have, you know.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
But saying why it's great, it's really hard. And I
actually had this experience with a friend recently who told
me that her teenage daughter was home with her around
the dinner table and this mom, who I know, she
just used the word masculinity in some context, right in
relation to something else, and her daughter said, do you
mean toxic masculinity? And and the mom said, no, no,

(12:45):
I just mean masculinity. And the girl, what do you
mean masculinity? You mean toxic masculinity? And it she became
clear that this sixteen year old had never heard the
word masculinity without the term toxic attached to it, which
is fair enough, because that's all we've heard for us
ten years, So I don't blame, but it actually has
led to a place now where you're right, you don't

(13:05):
even need the modifier anymore. He Actually, there's good survey
evidence now that people just have negative views about masculinity period.
And then you wonder why so many of our boys
and young men are feeling somewhat lost and somewhat unsure
of their place in the world because we've created a
negative frame, a deficit based frame. I mean, I was
just think, like, I've raised three boys the idea that

(13:28):
my goal was to make them not toxic. Can you
imagine that? It's like, here's an inspiring vision for you boys.
Can you imagine a world where you're not poisonous? I mean,
that's that's that's what I Meanwhile, we're saying to the girls,
you go, girl, girls on the run. You know, girls,
girls are magic, the future is female, you know, etcetera.
We've got this massively empowering message, and then we're saying
to the boys, don't be toxic. Yeah, really, that's the

(13:50):
best we got.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
How did you come to this? How did you involved
with this? Because this is you know, this wasn't your
main focus from the beginning of time when you started
a career, and you know, how did you come to this?
Is it after raising your kids?

Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's partly that. So what was happening was that in
my day job as a think tank scholar, well, I
was working on most issues of like education and employment
in the inequality basically, and I kept seeing these data
points showing a lot of men were doing really badly,
Like and I kept seeing these data points.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
What were some of those data points? By the way,
like how would those play outs?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
I'll give you one. So when the pandemic first hit
in the US, the college enrollment rate for men dropped
seven times more than for women, seven times more.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
And I noticed that in the table from the government
kind of release, and then went around I was at
the Brookings Institutions think tank then showing it to my
colleagues who work on education, saying did you know this?
And they're like, no, none of them knew about it,
and it's because it was buried in like table two.
But I was like, isn't that kind of a story,
Like don't you actually didn't really go down for women,

(15:08):
but it created for men. Isn't that a story? Why
is no one covering this. Why is no one writing
about this? And it became clear that it was. No
one saw it as their job to draw attention to it,
including the people in the Department for Education. But there
were no think tanks, there were no scholars, there were
no journalists whose job it was to look at that
data and say, wow, massive been dropping male college enrollment. Now,

(15:30):
if it had been the other way around, there would
have been loss of coverage, right, it would have been
it would have been wall to wall. And that's because
there are lots of people whose job it was to
draw attention to it. So, Okay, I'll scratch my head
and say, well, this is because no one's job, no
one feels to be their job, and in fact, anybody
who does draw attention to it runs the risk of
being immediately dismissed as arectionary. And then I'd go home

(15:53):
and my boys are talking about the fact that their
high school had just been on national news for being
a cradle of toxic masculinity, like, wait, what happened? And
the story was that a boy had made a list
of girls that they fancied. And part of my lesson
about that is like, we're mistaking toxic masculinity for teenage masculinity, right,

(16:13):
and so like, when you're a teenage girl, boy or girl,
you might make lists like that, right, and it might
be you know, appropriately or inappropriately shared or whatever. But
then you grow up and so like, I don't think
I should be making lists of that in my the
Brookings Institution for it, and I think and I think

(16:34):
I would quite rightly be called to account if I did.
But that's funny. But I'm but I'm not fifteen. Yeah,
And so that's the point is that, like, and it's
just the the overreaction to those things has actually, I think,
ended up really creating this strong counter reaction among a
lot of people, especially among a lot of boys and

(16:55):
young men. To look, they'll get it. They they want
to be good people. They they are not misogynists. They're
not coming back to the world where they had this entitlement.
They they just don't want to be told that they're
the problem, as they guess, and they're kind of they're
kind of over it. And I do think that people
are kind of realizing that there's a balance to be

(17:15):
struck here between correctly holding people to account and basically
kind of tarring you know, all teenage boys with the
brush of toxic masculine.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think, no, I know, it's it's it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's almost like we've forgotten what humanity is like, we've
just forgotten biology, just just straight biology.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
We've forgotten what it's like to be a teenage boy.
I mean, like those of us who were teenage boys
can kind of remember sort of why you know, when
that when the flood gates of testosterone kind of kind
of rushing for you. And and it's super interesting. I
find I find it very interesting that some of the
people who are most progressive on this issue actually are

(17:57):
denying the witness of many trans men who've had like
who've had a testosterone shops and kind of someone who
then talk about how that changes their psychology, including including
with the relations to things like this. And so it's
like it's very interesting to me that they, well, on
the one hand, we don't allow for that difference in
biology in sort of boys and girls in you know,

(18:20):
in adolescence. But then we demand, we demand very strong
that we pay attention to it when it comes to
the trans issues, which which by the way, I support,
and so you've got to you can't have it both
ways ide biology matters or it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Do you think, do you think because of sort of
the landscape that we live in and the culture that
we're sort of existing through.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Right now, that.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Their people are trying to find a balance or trying
to figure out what the what the right level is
and it's just sort of you know, it's a learning
experience that eventually will even out.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
I think so. I mean, I'm optimistic. I think that
there's because young people are figuring with out. And what
I see among young men in particular is that they
remain as committed as ever to gender equality. Right. They
want their sisters and their female friends to have equal opportunity.
They do, Yes, there's no change in that, right. But
they also have their own issues and their own challenges,
and they don't want to be pathologized. They don't want

(19:15):
to be told that they're the problem. And they're figuring
it out, they're finding ways through this. It's messy. I
actually think it's middle aged adults imposing their own their
own ideological views from left and right that's causing the problem.
I think most people are just in good faith trying
to figure it out. So, for example, there's recent evidence
that kind of Bothers are doing more, you know, around

(19:36):
more looking after kids. Right, every year, it just goes up.
And that went up among Republican families just as much
as Democrat families. There's no division. So quietly men and
women are just figuring this out in their actual family lives,
and every family is going to be different. But like
we're is doing it. And meanwhile, you've got the culture
warriors of like left and right, like urging this to
the barricades and persuading young women that their problem is

(19:59):
young men, and persuading young men that their problem is
young women, when in fact they both face similar problems,
which is how to buy a house, get a job,
you know, find someone to raise a family with, make
a living, raise kids, and be happy. Right, that's actually
what people want.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Mm hmm yeah yeah. I mean, so when you had
this incident with your son, was that sort of the
impetus for you to say, you know what, let me
look deeper into this, let me actually make this a
part of my life, my research, my next book.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
No, I mean I was already on the path towards that.
But it did help, it did, but it did help
me with my It did what it did do? Was it?
It hardened my resolve to write about this issue of
toxic masculinity and how the progressive left has made a
series of errors on this issue over the last ten years.
I then have equal criticism for those on the right,

(20:50):
of course, but like I was just like, because here's
what I felt was like, privately, most people just like,
are you kidding me with this? Really? But publicly no
one was willing to say that. And so what it
came to realize was that there are a lot of
people worried about their sons thinking that some of this
stuff was actually damaging to their son. Is that we
weren't telling a good story, and they were all thinking

(21:11):
this privately and talking about it, but no one was
really wantingsically in a positive way, and so that actually
leave me. So the honest version of this story is
that as I became determined to write about this, every
single colleague lined up to tell me not to, and
every single every single publisher turned me down.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Is it because of the potential backlash? I mean, you're
literally you're literally proving a theory right there without even
writing a word. It's like they don't want to touch
it because yeah, no, was.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
That a particular moment, So it's twenty twenty one, it's
like a moment great sensitivity, etc. But also kind of thought,
I thought, look, if people like me as boring as
I am, like, I have chance, I have research studies.
I'm pretty even handed here. I'm very interested in increasing
the sheriff technical high schools and improving mental health services

(22:02):
and that kind of stuff like boring solutions focused stuff
like if I can't talk about boys, who's going to
and then you can't complain if other people who aren't
like that are talking about it. And actually, one of
the sound bites from my new think tank, so I
create a new think tank, the American Institute for Boys and.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Men's Yeah, I want to talk about that. Very cool.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
One of our internal mottos is keep it boring. And
my son overheard me saying that one day and he said, well,
you're the man for that job. Down by praise. I said,
I'm trying to keep this boring. I'm trying to make
this boring. I actually want there to be just solutions
rather than culture war stuff.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Yeah, and when you created this think tank, you know,
how did that come about?

Speaker 2 (22:49):
And was it a difficult thing?

Speaker 3 (22:52):
To start, were people a little bit hesitant to become
a part of it because of you know, what you
were talking about a little bit.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
I mean, by then I'd broken some of the ground
with the book, and so I think the tide was
moving a little bit. And honestly, I just think the
stuff I did like in the book, and you're very
kind about it, but I think all I did was
just sort of state facts.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
All I did was sort of say to people, you
know that thing you're seeing and feeling about how boys
and men are doing, you're right and you're not alone.
And here's the data to prove it right. And so
all it did was really correct mission space to say ah.
And I think the relief that people had, which is like, oh,
thank god, we can actually you mean, we can talk
about this. I didn't know we could talk about this,
but this risk boring Brookings guy talking about it, so

(23:40):
it must be safe to talk about it now. And
so in a way, like I kind of diffused it
a little bit, I think precisely through that exercise. But yeah,
even then it was a bit difficult to persuade people initially,
not so much actually got funding, but to come and
work for me, partly because it's a new organization and
it's a bit of uncertainty, but also, yeah, there's still
this sort of men's rights feel to it. Even now

(24:00):
when you say I work for the American Institute for
Boys and Men, people they go, are you the ones
that hate women? And no, we're not the ones that
hate women. But the truth is, this is back to
where we were a minute ago. Where is that unless
someone is waking up every day doing the research, looking
at the data. Like to come back to the example
I had before, and I'll give you one other example,

(24:21):
like there was a sevenfold difference in college enrollment, but
also we saw a huge increase in suicide rates among
young men.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
Right, so the suicide rate is four times higher among
men and boys of all ages and women. But between
twenty ten and twenty twenty three, among young men aged
under thirty, that rate has risen by a third. And again,
the CDC put back data out and nobody covered it.
Nobody analyzed it, no one did press rases on it.

(24:52):
No one was like, it was no one's job to say,
WHOA did you see that the male suicide rate? We're
not because there was no American Institute for boys and men, Right,
And so unless it's someone's job to be noticing this
stuff and drawing attention to it, then we can hardly
be surprised if people don't know about it. And so

(25:12):
I just or drew inspiration from the many women's organizations
to do a really good job of drawing attention to
the issues facing women and girls, including during the pandemic
by the way, and just said, okay, that's great. I
love that work. But if we don't have similar institutions
doing the same for boys and men, there were always
going to get an asymmetry in our awareness of what's

(25:33):
going on, and that asymmetry creates a lack of awareness.
But when the problems are real in real people's lives
but are not being talked about, that creates a dangerous vacuum.
And so the idea of the institute is to just
build that vacuum.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yes, amazing, And then what are we looking for? What
are some of these sort of feelings that they're having
where they're maybe don't feel worthy or they have lack
of self love. And then the age group can I'm
curious about as well, you know, are that when are
we most susceptible and how long does that continue? Can

(26:07):
you be seventy five years old and still feel less? Then?

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Yeah? Yeah? And in facts, just to stay on suicide
statistic for a minute, like the gap in suicide race
among the over eighty five, you know, seventy five is
the biggest of all. Well fold. I think that the
connective tissue here is that sense of being needed, knowing

(26:33):
that you're wanted and having a role to play. And
so I think the thing that everyone needs is to
know that they're needed. I think we all need to
be needed, right, we know that, Like I'm sure like
for you to know that your sons need you, that
your wife needs you, that your colleagues need you, that
your community needs you, that the you know, civic group,
church group, whatever needs you to show up on Saturday

(26:55):
to do that thing right. Actually, that sense of being needed,
I think is the core of mental health. And it's
why when you look at and Fiona Shanda, the researcher
looked at what are the words that men use to
describe themselves before they take their own lives and the
two most commonly used words were worthless and useless. And

(27:18):
so I think what happens is if we're not careful,
we send a message to men and especially young men,
that we're not sure we need you. Like we needed
your dad to be the bread women, right, we needed
your granddad to be the to be the industrial worker.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Whatever.

Speaker 4 (27:34):
But now it's a new world, right, forty percent of
the breadwinners a woman, and we've moved away from an
industrial economy. Thankfully there's pure wars to fight now. So
I'm not sure we need you to go to war?
Do we need you? What are you necessary for? Like
more in Endowed out a book with the funny title
are Men Necessary? But actually behind that it's the real

(27:55):
question that every culture has to answer, which is why
are men necessary? Why do we need men? Not despite
being men, but because they'm men? And the result of
that sense of just detachment, disconnectional. So I'll give you
a stat like, among men age twenty to twenty four,
a tenth of them, ten percent of them are not
in school or in work. Right, they're not earning or learning.

(28:17):
We don't really know what they're doing. Well, that's like,
that's the decimation of a generation. And so we can't
like those young men are in real danger, I think,
And to back to your original question. The second part
of your question is that I think that those lateeen
adolescent years into the twenties, like if you get if
you get the year sixteen to fifteen to twenty five

(28:39):
roughly rise, and you lock into a job, you lock
into a sense of purpose, you lock into a trajectory,
then I think your chances are pretty good. But also
that's where we lose a lot of young men too.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, I think men are also emotionally evolving too. A
vulnerability now is seen as more of a superpower than
it is, you know, something that is you know, looked
at as weak, and we associate our sense of well
being with you know, providing and with a job and

(29:14):
all of those sort of tactile things. When when we
can be needed for emotional things now, you know, we
can be needed for a shoulder or wisdom or something
rather than just sort of that masculine male role that
we're so used to, you know. So it's almost like

(29:35):
if you can get in touch with sort of who
you are and be okay with how your emotions and
your vulnerability and the way you feel, you can provide
in a different way.

Speaker 4 (29:46):
So that's your right. I love the way you put
that provide in a different way, you can be providing
something else. I mean, actually one of the one of
the tests in back to your inner question about historically,
like I was really looking into the like anthropology and
h history and evolutionary psychology around like masculinity, and the
consensus really was that in most societies, the boy becomes

(30:09):
a man when he produces more than he needs for
his own survivals. Now, use is more of what more food,
more money, more energy, more love. But in a sense
like you're generating a surplus, right, you're actually your generative.
You're producing more. Now of course that's true women too,
But in the case of women, because they actually reproduce

(30:32):
for it, they do they do the you know, the
great give birth to babies. Right, their generativity, the way
that they're contributing is like much more obvious and much
more in a sense biologically fixed, where for men it
has to be more social, it's more cultural. And so
actually it's like you're providing more than you get, you were,
than you need for yourself. That's what that's what it

(30:53):
means to be a man in most cultures, and that's
what most rights of passage. You have also been about
which is like, Okay, now you're going to generate more
than you need for yourself because the tribe needs you
to generate more. So it's just that in you know,
twenty twenty five, in an urban environment, in an advanced economy,
that's going to look very different to how it looked

(31:14):
even one hundred years ago, certainly five hundred years ago,
and certainly five thousand years ago. Right, that's going to
be very different for men. And actually that that's why
the male role evolves even more than a female role,
right because actually, because the female role always has this
fixed issue about what we produce the babies, right, it
doesn't mean that women aren't doing a million other things

(31:36):
as well. I don't want to be misunderstood.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Of course, for men.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
It's for men, it's always a little bit more constructed.
It's always a little bit more Okay. So what does
it mean to be a protector and a provider today, Oliver,
Because it's not going to look the same as it
did one hundred years ago. It might be protecting your
kids from some of the online dangers by understanding their
online life, playing video games with them, teaching them how
to navigate the online world. In a way that actually,

(32:01):
you know, gets the benefits of that world, but also
makes them aware of some of the dangers of that
online world too. That's more helpful now, and teaching them
how to fire a lion right or bo or bow
or bow hunt an el right, actually being able to
navigate reddick is more important than shining.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Raining again raising boys.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
I do have a little girl as well, But you know,
I it's almost like I've worked purely off of instinct,
doing the best that you can. I always say, it's
not if you're fucking them up, it's to what degree
you are, because we're we just don't you know, we're
trying our best. I have a certain way of doing things.
I remember what it's like, kind of like what we

(32:53):
just talked about a little bit ago, what it was
like to be fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. So I don't have
that hypocrisy now do I want to steer them away
maybe from some of the things that I got into. Well,
I want to give them stories now. Whether they revere
those stories or think or use it as a cautionary tale,
I don't know. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but Dad, when

(33:13):
you told me that you did this, this and that,
like I'm like, well, no, no, no, that wasn't supposed to
be like, oh, you go ahead and do that. It
was not encouragement, you know, but it's it's tough because
you think you're doing a good job, but you just
you don't really know. And I guess your boys are
older now, So do you see the proof in the

(33:34):
pudding sort of later on in life when they have to,
you know, be on their own and do their own thing.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Yeah, I like to think so. I mean the thing
is that, like the two the two things that I've
wanted them to be are kind Yeah, My kindness is everything,
and I hope that they've got that. And also to
have what my mother would call coil because my mother's

(34:01):
Welsh and the Welsh's her first language. And so this
is a word I heard quite a lot growing up
is oil h y w l. And what it basically
means is the literal translations like the wind in your sales,
having agency probably the best translation into American English or
something like the mode joke, right, But it's like having
a having like being under your own steam, having your
own you know, being on a mission, being under your

(34:22):
like having purpose, trajectory direction, right, And so for me,
there's a combination of kind of kindness and coil is
really what it's about. Now, how that ends up, I
just don't know. So one of my son's works in
digital marketing, whatever that is. I mean, I sort of
really do know, right, another another one is a fifth
grade teacher in Baltimore City, And the other one we

(34:43):
don't know what he's going to do yet. But I
will say that I've had this sense of agency. And
I'll give you one of my proudest moments as a
father was that I used to like, if I'm on
a train or a bus or something like that, and
there's someone who needs a seat, like an elderly person
or a pregnant person or something like that, and there
are and there are young men sitting down. I always
tell them together. I always say it was so nice

(35:06):
to say, guys, who here? I was nice? Who here
wants to give up their seat? Because I think this
person would want to hit I always, I always comment.
And then my son's growing up, it would be with
me and they would just be mortified, so embarrassed. If
my dad can, Dad can stop doing it? Like there
an these people looking down the phones and like the
dad stopped doing that, right, so embarrassing, and I'm like, no,
I'm not going to stop doing that because these guys

(35:27):
should give up their fucking seat, right and and someone
someone needs to If they're not doing it automatically, then
I'm gonna I'm going to tell them how to do
it right.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Anyway, I'm I'm on a I'm on a train with
my middle son, who's probably the one who was most
embarrassed by me when I was doing a little son.
I don't know what it is like two three years ago. Now,
it's very busy. We're standing up. There's a bunch of
guys sitting down. This elderly lady gets on my son says, hey, guys,
who's going to give up their seat? I was like,

(35:59):
my work here is.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
I feel that right now too. I love that stuff
because the pride, the pride that you have for your children,
there's nothing like that. And when you are able to
sort of see that, and it wasn't it wasn't a lesson.
It was just imprinted upon them from who you were
and who you are. And to know that they're actually watching,

(36:22):
because sometimes you think, oh, they don't give a shit
about me. My oldest is eighteen, and he's like, whoa dad, Like,
you know, he's turned He used to cuddle all the
time and now he's turned into sort of that teenager
who just doesn't want to do anything. You know, But
you when you when I watch him mimicking some of
the things that I do and say and act, You're like, oh,

(36:43):
he's listening. He's still in there.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
He's listening always, And they notice everything. And I think
that the lesson for me is that it's believe their eyes,
not their ears. And this has to be show not tell. Right.
You can have discuss about kindness and how it's supposed
to be and how men should behave towards women and
how you should be in the world. In the end,

(37:07):
that's kind of irrelevant. What actually matters is how do
they see you relating to them?

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Mum?

Speaker 4 (37:11):
How do they see you relating to people in the street.
How do they see you like being in the world.
And look, we're going to suck it up a lot, right,
and so, but it's a long arp. It's on the
it's on the average, and they notice everything. Let it
give you one example from my own life, which is
like I went through this phase where my youngest son

(37:31):
is a complete technique and his favorite thing to do
on a Saturday was to go to this place called Microcenter,
which is this vast warehouse sized place just filled with
like technology stuff like bits of computer and stuff. I
don't know, you still love going there. It's completely windowless,
ghastly plows as far as I'm concerned, like full of
full of, full of nerves. And he would always be

(37:54):
every Saturday. I'd be on a sofa and be like, Dad,
can you say to my micro Center?

Speaker 5 (37:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (37:59):
And it got to the where's old enough? And I'm like, no,
you can play the bus or I'll play for an uber.
I'm not getting off. I'm not I'm not going. I'm
not going to drive you twenty minutes to that ghastly
place in the walk record and then I and then
and then something changed in my own life actually was
partly involved with some religious activities, but training my own
life where I actually kind of thought, you know what,

(38:20):
my kids arething around for that long, how how long
are they actually going to be asking me to go
do something with them? And I made it. I made
a decision, like most of the times when he asks me,
Dad going to go to micro Center. I'm going to
say yes, even if in the moment I'm going to
be like, yeah, that leaves dad alone. Dad wants to
take coffee, and like, watch that I did it.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
And do you know what?

Speaker 4 (38:41):
A couple of months later, and I didn't tell him
anything anybody that I was doing so just made it consciously.
But a couple of months later he said, really noticed
that that since you did that thing, you've been taking
me to micro Center a lot more often. Wow, they
noticed everything. Yeah, everything.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
No, I know, I know, I know, and and and
I act to dardingly. You know, I do the same thing.
Like it's Sunday, I'm watching football, Dad, we hit golf
balls because my kids are now obsessed with golf and
I was a very good golfer and the last thing
I want to fucking do is get up off the
couch on a Sunday and go hit golf balls. But
I'm like, yeah, you know, let's go. Yeah, because I

(39:17):
know they're noticing. I know they're taking it in. They
don't say thank you, they don't think it's none of that.
But I know that when they are forty years old,
they're like, oh, Dad got off that he did.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Shit with us. He was there for us, you know,
the sort of the sacrifice.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Sacrifice I know, it's like I did it. And of
course as kids, you're like narcissistic jerks. Basically, that's back
to the point about being a teenager. But I have
the sustressed my own my own dad. Where I was sixteen,
I was really happy at my school, and my dad
got a job on the other side of the country,
and well we should, you know, really we shouldn't move.
But I was so happy in the school that they said, look,

(39:51):
let's just not move. And he's got two more years
to go. So what that meant was that my dad
got up at like five am every Monday morning and
drove across the country. I didn't come home Friday. You
had to stay over there Friday, I come home and
kind of Friday night. We did that for two years
so that I could stay, so that I could stay
in that school. I didn't I didn't even notice. I
was probably vaguely aware that dad wasn't around as much.

(40:12):
I was just so I was so wrapped up in
my own stuff. I didn't know that's why he'd done it,
and he didn't. And the point is he didn't. He
didn't tell me. That's why he'd done it, right, he
didn't say I'm doing this for you or whatever. I
never knew. I never knew, right, And then I realized,
like I said, hey, Dad, why doesn't do that thing
where you kept driving? And said, well, because we wanted
to keep you in that school because you were so
happy there. I was like, you drove across the country,

(40:32):
you know, every week. And I said, really, why did
you do that? And he said, because.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
It's what you do.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Never forgotten that, Yeah, what is because it's what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
It's it's such a it's such a simple statement, but's
so true.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
It is just what you do.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
That's what you do.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah, it's interesting just thinking thinking back on what you
said about sort of you know, watching and not being told,
but just sort of that imprinting. There's a flip side
to that too, because when you don't, when you grow
up in not such a great place, I think you
sometimes you have a choice. Sometimes it's just so ingrained

(41:09):
that you're going to repeat some of these patterns. But
and I can relate this to my own life, where
you know, I understand my dad's hang ups. I know
that he came from a place of divorce as well.
At the same time, I didn't want to be him.
So it was a switch where I said, I'm going
to be better, you know, I'm going to be different,

(41:30):
rather than this is how you love. You know what
I mean, you love by not being there, you know.
And then my stepdad came in and he was an
incredible man for me and taught me what it was
like to be a man, taught me independence. I was
a mama's boy. I was afraid of my own shadow,
and he gave me some tough love in the best way,

(41:50):
which is sort of just letting me be alone in
the woods sometimes in Colorado and letting me panic essentially,
and then coming out from behind a tree and saying, Oliver, Hey,
you're okay, Now get us home. We're on ATVs and
little motorcycles, and I was able to get myself home,
and he's like, you know, boom, there's a lesson for you.
At the same time, he was my biological dad, and

(42:11):
so you know, a lot, there's a lot that I
have of Kurt, but there's a lot that I have
just sort of sort of built on my own through
trial and error and through, you know, sort of cherry
picking the things that I like and then throwing away
the things that I don't. I mean, does that sort
of happen Probably even with a good family, with you,
with me, with good dads, I mean it's like, yeah,

(42:34):
dad's great there, but this I don't really like.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Yeah, I think that's right. I like that imprinting. I
think that's right. I think you're imprinted via the culture
around you. And so when you're figuring out how to
be in the world today and how to be a
man today, then you're just drawing that inspiration from from
the men around you and the men in your life.
And I don't think we have we're consciously able to
sort of choose necessarily what lessons like if it's by definitely,

(43:01):
if it's being imprinted on you, it's almost it's a
subconscious Its a subconscious thing, right, And that's why, like,
that's why it's just over time, like a guy behaving
like that, you're just showing, not telling. It has this
kind of cumulative effect, right. It's not a curriculum for
masculinity or how to be a man in the world.
It's a behavior that's learned and observed and you said

(43:21):
at the beginning that can be from one man, it
can be from other men, can be from a bunch
of men. I mean again, just row my experiences, like
my middle son, who really struggled at school and then
in fact he went to university, but he went back
to the UK. You wanted to go to Cardiff University
because that's where my parents lived, and he wanted to
be near his grandparents. And he told me one day

(43:42):
he was, you know, when he was struggling through college
and he struggled with some mental health issues, and he
said he could actually see on his walk from his
dorm room to the to the college, he could see
the tower of the hospital next to my parents' house.
He just looked north and see it. There was a
certain point in the wars and if I'm walking there
and I'm feeling a bit down, I look them north
and I can see that tower and I know that

(44:04):
that's where Grandpa is and if I need him, he'll come.
And that helped me get through the day. And actually
he very rarely had to draw on them. He'd go
for Sunday lunch or whatever they said, just knowing that
grandfather was there, and they did help him, and I
was like, you know, sometimes it doesn't just take more
than one man in one generation. Sometimes it takes two generations.
My father has done a huge amount as the grandfather

(44:26):
to my sons and especially to that son. And I
don't know if there was just something in my relationship
with him or some timing, whatever, it just meant that
my dad was able to kind of build something else
complimentary around it. He also taught me how to ride
a bike when they're on vacation, wants and and so,
and I think as a dad, part of the challenge
actually is to allow that to happen, allow the space

(44:49):
for other men like Uncle Simon, like my dad, like
a bunch of other people in my kids and lives,
some of their coaches, their colleagues, one of their bosses,
to just actually also play that role, not be not
be territorial about that right do our thing, but recognize that,
you know what, as I said earlier, it's going to
take a village. And like some of the other guys

(45:10):
in my kids' lives have definitely done a better job.
And sometimes actually they can't. There's stuff that they can
talk to my friends about that they can't talk to me.

Speaker 5 (45:19):
About Yeah, well, what's what's been your response with just
women overall, just generally, you know, if.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
They're moms of boys, I would say that it's mostly
pretty positive. Like the boy moms are a big force
I think right now in our culture. They're like very
grateful in some ways and interested and worried and happy
that we're talking about it. And interestingly, if we've younger women,
even though they don't have kids, like, they're typically quite

(45:55):
open to it because they're seeing it in their brothers
and their friends some of these kinds of issues and struggles. Actually,
I think the toughest thing is with women who are
like middle aged and older have a visceral resistance to
this discussion. And I completely understand why, and I share
it a little bit too, which is like, are you
kidding me? Like we've only just broken some of these
glass ceilings, and we still, by the way, have got

(46:17):
some still to break. And do you know what I've
had to go through to get where I am now?
And now you want to turn back to boys and men?
And so actually I get that there's a generational thing
here where, like I think for women who've really had
to kind of leave piles of broken glass behind them
as they've broken glass ceilings to suddenly say to them, oh, now,
boys and men, that's hard.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
And I get that, Yeah, both can happen at the
same time as you've said yes, and they get that.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
But there is there is an initial kind of visceral
reaction to it, which I understand. And you have to
be reassuring that that's not the goal here to go
back and you can do two things at once. It's
not a zero sum game, but people I understand why
people fel.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
In fact, it's really interesting that sort of reactionary, that
the reactionary feeling of that pullback when you talk about,
you know, the mental health and the well being of
men and boys and wanting to champions something like that.
It's strange that we've been almost conditioned, you know, to
be like, oh wait a minute, is that is that okay?

(47:22):
When in reality what's wrong? I mean, it's it's it's
a necessity. It's their human beings who are dealing with
their own ship.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Well yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
But I think it is because of this fear of
where where it might lead. And I think, particularly in
our current culture, there's a lot of fear that you know,
there's some online misogyny, there's some obviously very famous figures online,
et cetera. And so there's a kind of fear that
there's this growing backlash against women right and the young

(47:53):
men are being young men are being recruited to a
misogynist cause. And I think that is largely to not happening,
but I can see why people might fear it happening.
And it feels sort of women like that their gains
are quite fragile and that we could end up going backwards,
and you can totally understand why some of them would
feel that. I don't think it's true, but I think
we have to really hold that thought in our minds

(48:15):
whenever we're talking about this, which is like if we
if we're going to rise together, we actually kind of
need both men and women to feel invested in the
well being of each other and get past that zero
or something. And that means you do have to take
seriously the arguments that women will make about this new
focus on boys and men and to emphasize that we

(48:37):
have to do both. It's not good for women if
men are struggling or vice versa. But you you have
to get to that point.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Of course, I mean women benefit from healthy men. I mean,
and men benefit from healthy women. Yeah, exactly, say you.

Speaker 4 (48:50):
Say it like that. It sounds so simple and I
think it's true. But it does. It does, But it
can get weaponized. That's the problem this work. This work
can get weaponized by peop or who do have quite
a reactionary gender. So we have to be aware of
aware of that, but not seed the ground as a result.
Like I don't think us running silent on it is
a good idea either.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Yeah, but just what do we do? You know, how
do we implement these things into our everyday life? I mean,
I know, when we parent our boys, we're sort of
working off of instinct or books if people read books,
or however they're doing it. But you know, how do
we how do we how do we put this into practice?

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Yeah, I mean at a personal level. You're not asking
me to do policy.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
On our personal levels.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Thrown me a policy.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
Yeah, that's what I want to do, But I feel
I feel you Look, I think that you've said it
a couple of times now, and I really want to
underline it, which is trusting her instincts, especially as a dad, Like, actually,
there are ways that kind of gods interact with their
kids that are just on the average a little bit different, right,
So they're a little bit more like to help kids
take risks and to manage those risks. They are a

(49:59):
little bit more like to be doing through play, especially
a little bit sometimes like competitive play, fun competitive play,
to actually be helping kids negotiate the outside world. That
seems to be true, especially when adolescents. So your kids
being the HDR now means that like you're you're sort
of in some ways at a maximum impact right when
your kids outcomes, right, not just boys but girls too.

(50:21):
But I do think that like a lot of dads
now kind of feel like sort of second rate mums,
all right, and they kind of they use a maternal
standard of parenting to judge their own parenting, and that's
not right. Actually, we do bring some different instincts to
the party. And so, for example, around the risk taking thing,
there's very often a creative tension between mums and dads,

(50:42):
and this, of course it doesn't always go this way,
but very often it's like get where a dad is
kind of wanting the kids to take some more risks
in a careful and thoughtful way, do some more adventure
stuff like like your stepdad did right as you just
describe that lovely story of you out in the woods,
and the mums are a bit all like be careful, yeah,
And that's a creative tension. If the dads actually end

(51:04):
up just downgrading their instincts and saying, oh, well, you know,
mother knows best, then actually end up disempairing themselves and
doing to diserve to their kids. So, as a dad especially,
my message to dad's right now is your instincts are important,
and they're not exactly the same as the munths, and
you need to discuss everything and being creative tension with that.

(51:24):
But if your instinct is that your son or daughter
should do ex or wise, don't assume that just because
your wife or partner disagrees with you, that you're wrong.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Right.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
A bit of dad energy is a good thing, and
it's one of the one of the areas I think
we've lost a bit of ground is that we've actually
ended up, I think sometimes almost mistrusting our own instincts.
That's why I'm so happy to say that you've got
to go with your instincts, because I think we tend
to trust maternal instincts more than paternal instincts, and that's

(51:57):
that's a mistake. We do need both and so lean
into those obviously don't do harm like the toxic masculinity
stuff online and they kind of moral panic around the
online world now, like, don't be the parent who's like,
I can't believe you're watching that. Slam the laptop now
at them. I'll give you one example of clothes, which
is this woman came up to me and said she

(52:18):
owed me an apology and she wouldn't thank I've never
met her before, and I said, why so because my
son watched a video on YouTube and then came to
me and said, do you know what, mom, Boys and
men are struggling in lots of ways now too, And
she said. I lost my temper with him. I said,
do you what are you watching? I don't want you
watching this shit online. Do you know what women have
had to deal with is this is some misogynist stuff

(52:38):
that I've been reading about, blah blah blah. And he's like, Mom,
maybe come watch it with me. And it was a video,
it was my video, it was my big think video.
And she said, by the end of it, she's in tears,
she's apologizing to her son and saying, I'm so sorry,
but I assumed the worst and actually this, this is
reasonable and interesting. And then they ended up actually said,
having the best conversation they'd ever had. He was fifteen,

(52:59):
how he's struggling at school and the struggling with ideas
of masculinity, and they got into it. And then they
both came to this event and they came up and
she kind of apologized to me and thanked me for
creating that conversation with her son. And so don't assume
it just because your son's online, that he's turning into
a misogynist monster. Engage with curiosity, not contempt. It doesn't
mean you shouldn't be careful, but like engage and also

(53:22):
for fact to take learn from them. You don't understand
the internet, right, you don't? They do? They understand it.
And the idea that you know what's going on on
the internet is hilarious to that.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Oh it's a joke, it's a market. I don't know
what's going on. Yeah, talk to you about it, discuss it.
So Andrew Tait tried not to mention, but this I
watched Andrew. I watched Andrew Tait videos with my sons
and we talked about what they hated, what they didn't like,
and to be clear, horrible, horrible, misogynist monster, like to be.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
Clear, Oh gosh, yeah, but let's talk about it. Let's
watch it.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
Let's not the you know, that's let's talk because everyone's
consuming this. It's it's everywhere, and so like, let's talk
about it.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Yeah, my kids would fuck with me and they'd be like,
Dad love Andrew Tate.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
I love them.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
He's like, and I'm like, it's like, do you guys
I mean, and then they.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
Jog that mom.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah, they're trying to get a reaction from me. I
can get it from you fromm.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
Doing it to wind you on, because guess what, teenagers
and especially teenage boys, they're a bit transgressive and so
this is the way and in your case, they're kind
of they're holding it. But also, like I think a
lot of teen boys, young men are quite likely to
go through a phase right now where they're interested in
those kinds of figures. I think it's the failure of

(54:43):
mainstream institutions to hold an honest conversation about these issues
has created the market for people like Andrew Tate. What's interesting,
but Andrew t is that the demand, not the supply,
and it's our fault. It is our fault that any
boys are turning to Andrew Tate. That's not Andrew Tate's well, yes,
and it's not the boys. It's our all.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, entirely. Oh my gosh, I know.
Well this has been amazing.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
So wait, I want to go where if you want
to like dig deeper into this, we can you have
for your think tank?

Speaker 2 (55:11):
You have a website, right, yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
So it's just a AIBM dot org So American Institute
for Boys and Men dot org. That's where all the
best research on this issue is to be found.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Now, yeah, and you can you can deep dive into
all that on the on the website.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
As promised earlier. It's really boring.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Yeah no, but but I know, really boring. But that's
sometimes that's the best good stuff.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
That's the good stuff. It's the boring stuff, but serious.
But this is the truth, is that I made a
joke about being boring. The issues facing boys and men
are too serious to be left to the online clowns.
They have to be addressed by us, by people in
the media, by people in tanks excessia. We have to

(55:52):
be doing this work if we don't want to be
being done by the clowns, and so like, Actually there's
joking aside, like this is a vocation for me now
because I've cut really comfortably that neglecting these issues has
been a big problem and we need to catch up now.
And we need to make our boys and men in

(56:13):
our own lives, in our own communities, Like there is
every guy listening to this knows a boy or a
young man in their lives who they should text right now, yeah,
and say how are you doing? And then ask them again, now,
how are you really doing? Who will benefit from you
reaching out to them?

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Right?

Speaker 4 (56:29):
I guarantee it. And so it's not just about policy,
it's about like, if you're a guy, you're listening to this,
I'm telling you, once you've stopped listening to us, call
that boy, boy or young man in your life, a neighbor,
a cousin, uncle, call him, see him, help pen. We
have got to make these boys and men know that
we see them, that we love them, and that we
have their backs.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Amazing, man, this makes me emotional. It's so fucking true.
Make make a phone call. There's you know, it's this
sister connectivity. It's like I'm thinking about you. It's very simple,
thinking about you, very simple. Yeah, thank you, brother, really fun.
I appreciate the time.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
And take care of those take care of those boys
as well.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
I will, I will, all right, all right? Man cheers,
oh lot.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
What a cool guy, god man dedicating his life to
the men and the boys. I think it's great, you know,
I think it's great. I wonder if he listens to
boys to men one, if that's his favorite R and
B group. I should have asked him that. God damn it, Oliver,
you should have asked. And you know, it's interesting. I
love what he said. You know, if this resonated with you,

(57:39):
call someone, call, call a friend, call a dude, call
a young cousin, call whoever. It's it's important. Men are important.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
You know.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
I know that sounds crazy, and it's it's sort of
strange that, you know, this idea of making men better
is a negative. We're all humans and we're biologically different.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
We have different.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Feelings, you know, than women do. We have a primal
nature that will always be inside of us. That is different,
and so why not harness that why not get better.
It's all about just getting better. So when we hear
about masculinity, we hear that word, let's not fucking put
toxic in front of it. Yes, there are toxic masculines.

(58:23):
Of course, there's toxic femininity. There's toxic everything, but masculinity.
That word has been bastardized. It seemed to make it
just negative when really.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
It's not so anyway, I just that's my thing.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
I love you.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
I'm out